In February 1986 she moved to London after successfully applying for a staff writer job on her favourite magazine, Smash Hits.
[2] Inspired by her mentor, Tom Hibbert, who interviewed her for the job,[3] Patterson was a key contributor in shaping the magazine's much-celebrated irreverent, comic style during its mid- to late-1980s sales peak of a million copies a fortnight.
By the early 1990s, Patterson had left Smash Hits to work freelance, going on to become a prolific contributor to the NME, The Face[4] and, by the late 2000s, Q magazine, as well as writing for broadsheets and women’s magazines including Glamour,[5] The Guardian, the Sunday Times and as a weekly columnist for Scotland’s Sunday Herald.
[8] It follows Patterson’s journalistic career from the 1980s to the present (revisiting her classic interviews with Madonna,[9] Prince,[10] Eminem, Beyonce, George Michael, Kylie Minogue, Richey Edwards, Amy Winehouse[11] and others) as well as her personal experiences growing up as the child of an alcoholic parent, multiple miscarriages and financial insecurity in the face of the gradual collapse of the music magazine industry itself.
Triggered by Patterson's diagnosis of breast cancer in late 2019, it is described as an "unflinching, poignant and gallows-funny odyssey through the mid-life trials we all face".