Melissa Kite was the most unpopular girl in her school

If you are bullied at school, you see, you never stop feeling bullied, no matter how old you are. It is absurd that I am 41 years of age and a group of women can still reduce me to tears. To be fair to the bullies, I was an awkward, argumentative, pedantic nerd of a schoolgirl. I know, shocking isn’t it?

To make things worse, I arrived at secondary school from a convent primary not knowing any swear-words. The way I expressed myself — arguing pompously with the other students, arguing pompously with the teachers, and spending lunchtimes in the piano practice rooms playing Bach two-part inventions — didn’t come into its own until the sixth form when I was suddenly declared achingly cool.

Another girl found me hammering away like Geoffrey Rush in Shine one afternoon and was taken by the idea that being a pedantic nerd was the new black.