To help keep herself safe and sane while making TV dramas in Afghanistan, Australian producer Trudi-Ann Tierney devised an ever-more elaborate game of hide-and-seek in her head in case the Taliban launched a surprise attack.

Imagining what it would be like to hide in a wardrobe, the middle of a lake or buried among a herd of goats, she mentally weighed the pros and cons of them all, as she explains in her new book Making Soapies in Kabul.

A chain smoker who lived in the most polluted city in the world, she endured typhoid problems, six different types of stomach bugs and pneumonia during what she says was the most exhilarating experience of her life.