If you have not heard of Una-Mary Parker yet, you soon will have. She is currently embroiled in scandals that involve sex, drugs, fraud and embezzlement, and last week she masterminded a hijack and broke down in tears after a friend took an overdose and died. ‘I have experienced some of these things,’ explains the charity queen-turned-novelist, ‘but 90 per cent come from my imagination. ‘ They occur, in fact, in her still unfinished second novel, Scandals (her first, Riches, is due out this summer).

Una-Mary Parker, 55, is named after her aunts Una and Mary. ‘My mother thought she was being clever – but neither of them left me a bean,’ she says in her baritone voice, laughing throatily.

Until this year, Parker was the ‘unrivalled’ organizer of charity balls. She spurns the tabloid label of society queen – ‘that conjures up visions of ladies in pearls, flowered hats and print frocks’ – preferring to be called an events organizer; ‘much more professional,’ she explains. She had been Tatler’s social diarist, attending as many as five fucntions a night and acquiring a contracts book that one imagines needed to be carried on wheels. ‘After 10 years on Tatler, I thought I would have a breakdown if I had to go to another cocktail party. ‘ But film premieres, dances, fashion shows and gala exhibitions for charity were another ball game.

Parker decided to ‘major on decor’ (ballrooms transformed into jungles and deserts), and to become a stickler for detailed organization. By the time Parker hung up her ballgown, she was arranging 19 major events a year, ‘practically each one attended by a member of the Royal Family’.

Such a blue-blooded coterie was familiar to Parker. She was a debutante who did the deb scene’, and had a coming out ball. ‘I came out in 1949 in court – at a drawing-room tea party in Buckingham Palace with the then King and Queen Elizabeth. ‘ Then she married her late husband, society photographer Archie Parker – and had ‘the traditional 1,200-guest wedding reception’.

Archie Parker left Lloyds to become a protrait photographer at a time when, Parker says, it wasn’t the done thing to leave the City to become a snapper. ‘We did all the royals at Windsor and some came to our Knightsbridge studio. ‘ they also photographed showbusiness personalities and celebrities (‘we spent a weekend with Somerset Maugham’).

Parker has no regrets about leaving her charity career. ‘I had gone as far as I could in 15 years, and writing had become an obsession for me. ‘ She ‘felt a bit shy and inhibited’ – understandably since she dubs her first novel, Riches, as being the Dynasty between the sheets. Nevertheless, she sent the half-written Riches – about the different ways enormous wealth affects people – to a New York agent. ‘She said it was terrific. ‘ Parker will not reveal how much money she’ll make, saying only that ‘there are a comfortable number of noughts involved’. Small wonder that she now intends to write a novel every 15 months.