Award-winning comedian Rosie Wilby tells Zoe Chamberlain how her life has risen from the ashes.

There was thought that the world might end in the year of the millennium.

It never happened, but for Rosie Wilby, she actually felt her world was caving in that year.

The singer/comedian had been singing live on the radio one evening and returned home to find there had been a devastating fire at her home.

“The fire brigade had been and the windows were all boarded up,” says Rosie, aged 40 and from Liverpool.

“It was a huge shock. It turned out that a candle had started the fire. We thought we’d blown it out but we hadn’t.

“When we got inside the flat we couldn’t believe it.

“The pictures had completely melted on the walls, the books on the shelves had burnt to a cinder. Fortunately we had a cat flap so our cats had managed to escape and were running round the garden all confused.

“Then we started to think of all the things we’d lost, like photographs and the computer that was full of information and contacts.

“It was heartbreaking seeing it all wrecked.”

It was made doubly worse by the fact Rosie’s mum died from bowel cancer around the same time as well.

“It was an awful time but it became quite a creatively fertile time for me as my emotions were so stirred up,” says Rosie.

“For me it was a very transitional time, and not just because we were sleeping on friend’s floors for the rest of the summer.

“It was time for me to grow up and deal with tougher stuff as well as the fun stuff of being in my band Wilby.

“Fortunately I had friends, those things keep you going and make you stronger.

“There were funny moments too.

“We had nothing because all of our stuff was so badly smoke damaged so our friends rooted round their wardrobes to find clothes for us to wear.

“One gave me a bag and it had a Brownie uniform in it.