Mary Fletcher  is Australian-born and trained as a journalist at the Sydney Daily Mirror, later becoming Deputy Women’s Editor on the Sydney Daily Telegraph. Moving to the UK, she became a London correspondent for the Australian Consolidated Press London bureau in Fleet Street, filing for the Australian Women’s Weekly, Woman’s Day and the Bulletin.

After moving to Derby, she joined the BBC’s local radio station there and became both a radio news reporter and newsreader. In the 1970s she returned to Australia with her family, where she worked at radio station 2GB (becoming the first woman newsreader in Australia) before returning to her first love, print journalism, where she worked at The Australian newspaper before becoming a feature writer on Woman’s Day magazine.

Returning to the UK, Mary became features editor on the IPC magazine Woman and later turned freelance, contributing to Woman, TV Times, Hello and OK, specialising in showbusiness and royalty (she went on two royal tours) as well as continuing to contribute to a number of Australian magazines.   Mary’s work took her all over the world, including numerous trips to Los Angeles to interview actors.  She retired from journalism following the death of her son Simon in 2000 and is currently secretary of the Simon Fletcher Charitable Trust, which she helped to found.