It is easy to sympathise with Clare Grogan's rationale for becoming a children's author. If you don't like what the kids are reading, write a book for them yourself. In Grogan's case the creative impulse came when she was flicking through a novel for 10-year-olds, with her niece. It was a miserabilist tale of fractured families and Grogan soon felt her irritation rising.

“There's a place for these stories, of course, but I felt upset about it.” she says. “This story was about the mum leaving the dad, the kids in the middle and the dad always down the pub. I thought: ‘Really? Can they not just have a childhood'.”

The woman once dubbed “The Punk Shirley Temple” has turned life into art with her first novel, Tallulah and the Teenstars, a touching story for girls about a teenager's wild dream of success in a pop group.

The plot should be the stuff of fantasy, but it's not. Her rocket ride to fame as singer with Altered Images and as John Gordon Sinclair's girlfriend in Gregory's Girl, made her world famous before she was out of her teens. But her success was founded on a loving home in Glasgow and her affection for her fictional characters and their innocent dreams is tinged with nostalgia. The book is dedicated to Patricia, her mother, who died last year.

Like Grogan, her heroine Teresa has two sisters, and a mum who works at a hairdressing salon. Teresa dreams of being a rock star, and even the stage name she choses for herself “Tallulah Gosh” was jokingly favoured by Grogan 30 years ago. Her band's big chance comes when a talent contest is organised by her school's head of drama.

Revisiting the past has seemed like picking over the details of someone else's life, says Grogan, whose daughter Lucia is 3. While writing she often felt like an outsider and this gave her an odd sense of power. “I can relate to Tallulah. She's younger than I was, but it is just so funny and strange that I can put myself back in that spot, except that this time I am in control.”

For the next novel in this trilogy of tales it is easy to imagine that the Teenstars will find themselves on the same bill as a big-name American act. After all, when Grogan was 17, her band sent a tape to Siouxsie and the Banshees and were hired as a support act on tour even though the boys in the band were still at school.

Throughout that period, her parents were “so passive” says Grogan, 46, and that helped her. “They knew I wasn't crazy or a rebel, I wasn't wild, but I had a dream and I wanted to work hard at it. People say, ‘Why did your parents let you go off and do those things, when you were pretty much still at school?' The answer is because they trusted me.

“Years later when I spoke to my parents they said, ‘We didn't understand much about what was going on, but we thought it best just to let you get on with it'. So they just took a step back from it because they didn't want my sisters to feel that I was doing something more special than them. I really admire my parents for that.”

Grogan says that the purpose of her book is to encourage girls to fulfil their dreams. Ironically, her own image is caught in time - the saccharine embodiment of a perfect teenage girl. She doesn't care though, and proves the point with her account of how she met one of her closest friends, the actor Alastair Mackenzie.

A couple of years, ago, she'd written a magazine article and was reading the draft in her garden, when a gust of wind tore it away over a wall into an adjoining garden. In London, neighbours are often strangers, but on this occasion it was MacKenzie who climbed up to return the paper.

“Oh hi. Aren't you the Monarch of the Glen?” asked Grogan. “I am. And you are the Pixie of Pop.” Grogan laughs. “Who cares about typecasting anyway? I just get on with life.”

Tallulah and the Teenstars is published by Black & White at £4.99.

Times Recommends

• Gentleman thief stole pages from rare books
• Picture: the Queen in 1970s flares
• Honoured after 70 years: man who saved thousands