Whether it be stylish accessory or more ‘mobile skip’, your handbag and its contents can be surprisingly revealing. Katharine Capocci speaks to a handbag therapist who tells all.

WHO would have thought your handbag – or man-bag, come to that – could say so much about your character.

To you it may simply be a fashion accessory that pulls an outfit together or a practical lugabout, but to handbag therapist Debbie Percy our bags, or rather their contents, are very much an extension of our personality.

And she reckons she can tell a lot about you and your life just from a poke about in your bag.

“Handbag therapy is a light-hearted look at how you and your bag might be a pretty good barometer on what’s going on in your life right now,” explains Debbie.

“It is both compelling and fun. I have been long fascinated by women and their relationship with their handbags.

“Why is the handbag so often off limits to our partners and children? Why do we laden ourselves down with our bags, or worse, scurry off with nothing useful inside them? And why do we rarely step outside of our homes without one?”

Well, if anybody has the answers to all those questions, it’s Debbie, 44, who is thought to be the only handbag therapist in the country.

Debbie is flavour of the moment, having appeared on Chris Evans’s Radio 2 show a few weeks ago talking about her work.

She lives in Berkshire, but is coming to the North East on July 13 as special guest at a women’s’ lunch at Jesmond Dene House in Newcastle with Pilates expert Rachael Faulkner.

So how do you become a handbag therapist, I wonder. Debbie says: “I have spent my life in corporate human resources for 22 years, where I developed my interest in people and what makes them tick.

“I am not a shrink. I am trained as a coach – both business and life coaching is my bag, and handbag therapy is a wonderfully light-touch introduction to life coaching.

“I market handbag therapy as ‘light-hearted’, but frankly most people find it quite revealing and therefore it opens up serious aspects.”

Debbie runs her own life coaching company called Acamar Coaching and specialises in working with people who want to make life changes.

Handbag analysis costs £9.99. Email her an up-to-date photo of your everyday handbag plus its contents and you will receive back a handbag therapy reading. Details on www.handbagtherapy.com or email: debbie@handbagtherapy.com.