EXCLUSIVE: Last week was a busy one for departing Channel 4 boss Alex Mahon.
Mahon revealed her exit from the Gogglebox network on Monday after eight years and by Wednesday her new gig running live entertainment firm Superstruct had emerged.
A day later, we can reveal her agent was sending a book proposal to publishers and TV execs for Mahon’s debut novel, a thriller titled The Rich Bitch Club penned with Walter Presents founder Walter Iuzzolino under the pseudonym Alex Walter. Peters Fraser Dunlop CEO Caroline Michel, who is repping the novel, told us The Rich Bitch Club “generated a significant amount of media and publishing interest in a matter of hours.”
“The Rich Bitch Club is conceived as an iconic, genre defining story,” reads the book’s promotion. “If Bonfire of the Vanities created the male-centric Masters of the Universe that was to dominate novels, films and TV series about power success for almost forty years, The Rich Bitch Club is about to turn that on its head.”
Mahon’s agent included a 34-page proposal with character definitions, chapter samples and a three-page author note. Mahon and Iuzzolino plan to deliver the book by Jan 2026 – meaning it will likely publish later that year or early 2027 – and it is being conceived as the first in a series.
The Rich Bitch Club follows an elite trio of powerful female CEOs, Olivia Huntingdon-Gough (net worth £1.1B), who runs a global soap and fragrance empire, Fleur Winthorpe (net worth £27B), the “richest of the rich bitches,” a maths and physics genius whose millions have come from the Silicon Valley tech world, and Natasha Jenkins (net worth £750M), the CEO of a global hotel, travel and cruise chain.
The protagonists are all CEOs at the top of their game. Each year, they pick one candidate with potential to make it big and take her under their wing for 12 months, propelling many women to success. But what founder Olivia doesn’t know is that burning resentments at the heart of the club are about to explode in one act of betrayal and backstabbing.
Mahon earned £1.5M ($2M) in 2023, making her the highest-paid CEO in the network’s 40-year history, although this dropped the following year amid the economic crisis. Her tenure was characterized by peaks and troughs as she fought off government attempts to privatize the broadcaster and steered it through the global pandemic and tough economic times.
“The glass ceiling has been cracked”
In Mahon’s author note, the Channel 4 boss said The Rich Bitch Club was born over long walks in Hyde Park with Iuzzolino as they plotted characters and their journeys. She cited the recent success of books like Jilly Cooper’s Rivals, a hit for Disney+, and A Woman Of Substance, which Channel 4 is remaking, and said, “It hit me—why had no one written that kind of saga, but set in today’s world of high-flying female CEOs?”
Mahon said her and Iuzzolino had decided to write the book because, “The world is at a tipping point. The glass ceiling has been cracked, but not shattered. Women are seizing boardrooms, commanding industries, and rewriting the rules of power. Yet, their stories—the raw, ruthless, and triumphant realities of rising to the top—remain largely untold.”
Whether the still-to-be-finished book makes the successful journey from page to screen will be intriguing. Mahon is about to leave the TV industry behind for now but used to run Shine and led Channel 4 for nearly a decade. Iuzzolino is the co-founder of Eagle Eye Drama – the producer behind shows including Professor T and The Couple Next Door – which has just been acquired by ITV Studios.
Michel said: “We do not comment on ongoing negotiations but PFD are delighted to be representing the novels of Alex Walter, the joint brainchild of Alex Mahon and Walter Iuzzolino. Their first novel captivated us from the first page and it has generated a significant amount of media and publishing interest in a matter of hours.”
Channel 4 declined comment.
