SHE is one of the country’s best-known, best-loved and best-selling children’s authors.

Few children growing up in the last 20 years won’t have heard of Dame Jacqueline Wilson, the prolific writer of more than 100 books.

Winner of innumerable prizes and with multiple TV and theatre adaptations to her name, as well as being a former Children's Laureate, her popularity among eight-to-13-year-old girls is unsurpassed.

I had expected her to attract a following, therefore, when meeting her to chat and watch one of her creations brought to the stage at Chichester Festival Theatre.

It turned out to be more hero worship than passing interest.

Before, during the interval and after the curtain went down on Hetty Feather, the tale of a plucky Victorian foundling, hordes of giggling schoolgirls lined the aisles to meet their hero, take her picture and pick her brains on how to turn their scribbles into success.

Patient and polite with each child, Jacqueline charmed their parents and also seemed to have the cast of the show under her spell.

She smiled with heartfelt delight as the show's musicians dedicated a song to her.

"It's wonderful!" she laughs.

"What has been so lovely each time I've seen the play, and I must have seen it about ten times now, is that you're really involved with the audience.

"When I'm writing a book, it's difficult to imagine someone actually reading it. You don't really know what's going on inside the head of your readers. But, when you're in the theatre, you can see them leaning forward waiting to see what happens next.

"It's quite emotional for me really. It's so imaginative and a brilliant script.

"On opening night I was nervous as I hadn't been able to see the cast rehearsing. I knew it was going to be good, but two or three minutes into the performance I just thought to myself, oh this is just delightful.

"It's true to the emotional feel of my book and my characters. It has tremendous imagination and I find it all really exciting."

Born at the end of World War II, Jacqueline wrote her first ‘novel’ when she was nine, filling in countless Woolworths’ exercise books as she grew up.

"I always loved writing," she muses.

"From the age of about six, when people asked what I wanted to do, I would say that I wanted to be a writer. People often laughed so I shut up after that, but I knew what I wanted to do. I wanted to write.

"So often when I meet youngsters now they say they want to write. But what they really mean is they want to be rich and famous like JK Rowling.

"All that didn't cross my mind!"

As a teenager she started work for a magazine publishing company and then went on to work as a journalist on Jackie magazine (which she was told was named after her!) before turning to writing novels full-time.

A divorced mother of one, her beloved 47-year-old daughter Emma is a is a professor of French literature and film at Cambridge University, Jacqueline spent many years hoping for a bestseller.

"In my day, you sent off a manuscript and I can still remember the heartbreaking thump when it arrived back through the door!"

The Story of Tracy Beaker, a feisty character who lives in a children's residential home, propelled the author to fame in 1991 and, ever modest, she puts its success down to the illustrator Nick Sharratt.

"It was the first of my books that had been illustrated by Nick and it had a very eye-catching cover.

"It was my breakthrough book. A very successful TV series about Tracy followed and everything changed from then.

"I've had a wonderful time and this is how it should be. So many people have all their big moments in the first half of their life, but I love the way everything has happened for me."

So, what advice does she give her teenybopper fans hoping to follow in her footsteps?

"Write the sort of things you would really want to read. Don't try to write another book about a boy wizard or another book with a central character like The Wimpy Kid because publishers are looking for the next best thing.

"Just have a lot of hope and a lot of resilience. It can take a long time and a lot of determination, as well as a huge amount of luck.

"Nowadays there are different ways of doing it. The internet is a possibility. Not that I'm a fan, but Fifty Shades of Grey was first posted on the internet so there are other ways of getting published.

"Also, I think just to write something for yourself, there's a real satisfaction in tinkering around with it and getting it to be the best it can be.

"My big ambition was to get a book published. That's all I ever wanted."

With over 35 million books sold in the UK alone, that's a dream come true.

Hetty Feather is at Mayflower Theatre from Friday to Sunday.

Tickets: 023 8071 1811 or visit mayflower.org.uk