The World I Fell Out Of: The Inspiring Sunday Times Bestseller

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My answer to that is why don't you look at the exposed group and do the health study on those people those people who walk down the road with me and say `in this house they lost this many children; in that house they lost this many children and she's now got a baby with hydrocephaly'."

If Reid and Jennings sound a little paranoid, consider this: late last year the ESR chief executive John Hay wrote to the judges of the Qantas Television Awards, strongly urging them not to honour Let Us Spray, given that it was in "blatant breach" of broadcasting standards and the subject of a BSA complaint. We’ve been at it now for nearly a decade. In his 70s, Dave has turned into a character from Still Game, the sitcom about two Glaswegian pensioners. Now eerily co-dependent in our independence, our ingredient for survival is laughter. From the 1960s on, residents were complaining to authorities about the smell of fumes from the plant; more recent media reports contain residents' recollections of curtains that melted, of factory workers' footprints leaving dead patches on lawns; of children playing with the orange foam from the effluent stream between the factory to the sea. In two incidents an explosion in 1972 and an equipment failure in 1986 the factory released chemicals across the town.

And then I see her, sitting on a terrace high above this wildness. Oh, gosh – I’m going to be fanciful now but I’m only saying what I feel. Firstly, her calm stillness seems somehow to quieten that wildness around her; I don’t know – maybe like a lion tamer with a beast underfoot. And secondly, she seems strangely familiar, as if I’m popping by as I do each week. A Unless you experience paralysis I feel it is very hard to imagine what it is like. I wrote the book giving my realities, but they are different from those of others. I felt that if I was completely authentic with mine, it might help give others some advice or help them realise that they are not on their own. The experience taught her that "if you can motivate people to care, change can happen" and she decided to become a journalist. The travails of the little guy up against big bureaucracy has been a recurring theme, from a Christchurch family fighting for compensation because they believed the garden fungicide Benlate was the cause of their child's birth deformity, to a piece in defence of Christchurch daycare worker Peter Ellis. There have been fluffy pieces, too, such as the 20/20 report on "psychic" Jeanette Wilson which won Reid a "Bent Spoon" award for gullibility in the field of the paranormal from the Skeptics Society. Incidentally, I never realised sex in old age consists of chatting about how attractive he finds Amber Rudd. Meeting her in person, though, it doesn't seem that simple; she still has a way to go before she achieves equanimity.

You’ll be able to push me to the pub in a wheelchair,’ Dave said. ‘And empty colostomy bags, that sort of stuff.’ Whatever the reason, Reid convinced herself that she would defy the odds and recover. After finding she could wiggle one of her toes, she drove herself to the brink of madness trying to prove the doctors wrong. When she realised her condition had plateaued, and that she would, in fact, always be in a wheelchair, she hit a trough. We live in a world of body fascism,” Melanie says, with a gentleness that contradicts her feelings. “Sometimes, when I look at glossy magazines and see nothing but gorgeous, airbrushed women; people fretting about the shape of their feet” – she laughs – “or that their hips are a bit too wide; I just think, ‘Gosh! It’s so unreal’. I genuinely now understand that there’s a parallel world of very ordinary people, who have illnesses, who aren’t pretty, who don’t have beautiful bodies; who are just trying to make their way. And this is the beauty myth – this madness that prevails in the media and on the internet.” Growing up outside Glasgow, Gregor was 14 he asked where he was christened and was told that he was adopted. But it wasn’t quite that simple. And so began an unfolding of truths, half-truths and polite cover-ups from his various families. For members of the public who couldn't care less about such niceties of journalistic practice, though, what really matter are the complaints about accuracy. They want to know if the documentary was right in saying that the government has for 30 years failed to take proper steps to look into health problems caused by dioxin from IWD, whether it has consistently misinformed the public, and whether it has botched again with the serum study.And what about David? How did he feel about her openness? "I didn't show it to him before I sent it away," she says. "But, you know, he's very forthright, very realistic. And it's fine. We still have sexy cuddles. There is still a spark. We laugh a lot. And we adore each other. That's more important." These days, I pinch myself, but yes, that really is me lingering over the Easylife catalogue and thinking, ‘Ooh, that could be very useful.’ That is me, excited at the magic device you attach to your carkeys or your phone to locate them (Dave wants one for his dental top plate). A generous, life-changing book ... some of the most insightful writing on what it means to be human that I have ever read.' - Clover Stroud, author of The Wild Other And it is humour that gets Melanie and Dave through the bleakest days. Humour based around Dave forgetfully leaving her all-important wheelchair cushion on the pavement outside the hospital; or forgetting to fit stabilisers to the chair.

So many souvenirs; it's as if her old life shattered with her bones and threw glittering shards of her past and future in all directions. official Mark Jacobs, "which opens up a whole new area in terms of freedom of the press". TV3 is refusing, and the complaint process has turned into a standoff as lawyers for the BSA and TV3 tussle over those tapes. And then – who knows; maybe as a result of that - a beautiful young woman named Bethany Townsend recently tweeted a picture of herself in a bikini, with two colostomy bags. It was a much-feted photo that went viral. On the contrary. The Times has been amazing. It actually did a leader calling for improved catheter care, as a result of what I’ve written.”

'I cry easily and a lot' - Melanie Reid on life in a wheelchair

Reid says responding to the two complaints has already taken her four or five months of fulltime work. Jennings says the complaints have little merit and are an "abuse" of the complaints system. Those people" are the residents and former residents of the New Plymouth suburb of Paritutu, who believe their health and in some cases the health of their children and grandchildren has been destroyed by the toxic dioxin released from the American-owned Ivon Watkins Dow (IWD) agri-chemicals factory in the 1960s, 70s and 80s. AS THE squabble over the value of the ESR report drags on, it is worth noting the rather depressing fact that even if flawless, the report would be far from the final word on whether or not the people of Paritutu were poisoned by the IWD plant. She doesn't shy away from the toll it took. "There you have it – the core of loss. The stone heart of longing, envy and emotional shut-down which is a woman’s self-defence against disability," she writes.

Still, she insists, the move to a wheelchair, changed her relationship with her husband. “I couldn't get cross and have the last word and turn on my heel and walk out of the room. I think I have become, not plaintive – I try very hard not to be plaintive – but more submissive. I used to be a can-do person; like most working mothers, I had a superwoman complex. But now I have to accept I cannot organise everything. I have to let Dave get on with things even if he doesn't do them the way I would." Reid started out in film in 1987, as a trainee on Sam Pillsbury movie Starlight Hotel. In the same period she was third assistant director on Geoff Murphy romp Never Say Die and a stunt horse rider on big-budget fantasy Willow.

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Paralysed from the top of her chest down, she was to spend almost a full year in hospital, determinedly working towards gaining as much movement in her limbs as possible, and learning to navigate her way through a world that had previously been invisible to her.