A place where I could threaten world leaders, lust after boys, and be every shade of me… in perfect safety. I needed a place where I could be horrible, sad, sexy, mad and bad, in total safety without judgement. I needed a friend who I could tell ANYTHING to. By age 16, I’d already been in one psychiatric ward. I had terrible dark fears and dark secrets. In fact, in my most anxious moments I realized it could all technically happen in one dreadful day. Being evaporated in a big mushroom cloud was one of my darkest fears, as was NOT marrying Tom Cruise, dying a virgin, failing my exams and being caught masturbating. We were innocents and threats seemed to be everywhere - even when George Bush Sr. It seemed so unfair and terrifying - me and the carrots had done NOTHING. My part of the world was full of farmland and American airbases, making me (and my neighboring root crops), a prime yet inadvertent Russian nuclear target. I was just a no-name adolescent living in a rural part of England. No one important would listen to my concerns, though. At aged fourteen I decided the entire adult world was clearly completely insane. Could a man who had once tried to play dad to a monkey really make the best informed decisions about the delivery of Intercontinental ballistic missiles? I thought not. Instead I got Ronald Reagan starring in Breakfast with Bonzo.

I wanted reassurance about the innate good sense of the people making decisions over my life. I tried to cure my worries by arming myself with knowledge. It was an odd day when I found out that the man with the finger on the button of the world’s biggest nuclear arsenal in the Cold War once starred in a film with a chimp. The book also inspired the hulu show, My Mad Fat Diary, which you can stream now. They transcend any generation.Rae Earl is the author of the forthcoming memoir, My Mad Fat Diary, available on April 19. Some emotions and rites of passage are timeless. Her sweet tale of a crush in 1915 still had power 70 years on. The man of her dreams was older than her - and in love with someone else. I can’t remember how we got onto it… perhaps Des Lynam reminded her of her lost love. It came totally leftfield - during Grandstand. She spoke with such longing and emotion, that it will stay with me forever. Then one Saturday afternoon, towards the end of her life, she told me about the pain of unrequited love. How could she possibly relate to what I was going through as a 14-year-old? All I knew was that she grew up in a different time. Sex wasn’t legalised in Britain until she was in her late 50s. What did she do when EastEnders wasn’t on? What was life like before Elvis? How did you even meet boys?! I didn’t dare ask her as she was Edwardian conversation was restricted to the weather, how good Jesus was, and cakes.

When my nan used to tell me about growing up without television and Radio 1, I used to look at her with wide-eyed fascination, and pity.

My fat teenage diary