With a successful career as a journalist and best-selling book under his belt, then 30-something, Ian Probert thought he was ready to ascend to greatness.

But on the inside, the Islington father-of-one was slowly, and unknowingly, dying.

Enfield Independent:

It started with him gaining more than three stone, and over almost 20 years progressed into him spending days on end in bed, being unable to write, with random “screaming noises”coming from his throat, doctors saying he needed a hip replacement, and finally regular fainting spells. The worst moment was when he awoke to find he had passed out against a hot radiator and had third degree burns on his back.

But the doctors were unable to find a cause and Ian admits he sank so low as to contemplate suicide.

Then one day a friend casually asked if he had considered a thyroid imbalance.

After a simple blood test, Ian was diagnosed with hypothyroidism – a disease where the thyroid does not produce enough hormones, affecting every organ in the body, but which can be treated simply by taking medication every day.

Now after 18 years of “hell”, Ian is “90 per cent recovered“, and has finally been able to complete his second book Johnny Nothing – the story of a boy who inherits £1 million only to have it stolen away by his wicked parents – which has already reached the top ten of Amazon’s children’s fiction list.

It is just 18 months since he began taking the medication, but Ian says the “fog lifted“ almost immediately and he is able to look back and see with hindsight what was happening to him during those darker days.

“I became very good at starting things and never finishing and thought I had a momentous case of writer’s block. My wife said I had lost my mojo, but what I was feeling was the unbelievable fatigue it causes “I would get up at 9am and take my daughter to school and then go back to sleep until 3pm when I had to go and pick her up.“ Originally from Burnley, he moved to London to pursue his career as a writer, working for publications such as the Guardian, and had his first book Internet Spy published aged 33.

Now 51, he is trying to spend as much time as possible with wife Laura and daughter Sofia, 11, and also reignite his literary career.

“I wouldn’t say I feel angry,“ says Ian, “I feel frustrated because my career was going so well at an age when I could have capitalised on it and now I have got to make up for that lost time.

“This is probably the quickest I have ever written anything,“ he says of penning Johnny Nothing in just a few months, “but the ideas were in my head for a long time.“

Johnny Nothing by Ian Probert is available on Amazon