What’s the worst thing that happened to you at school? Wet yourself on your first day? Tick. Always last to be picked for the sports team? Tick. Broke your arm showing off on the climbing frame? Tick. Sent to a boys’ school, when you were a girl? Tick. I’d better explain… In 1977, when I was eight, my parents got new jobs teaching at a Dorset boarding school, jobs that came with a place to live. We packed up our little wooden Buckinghamshire bungalow, where I was born and which I loved, and moved to a 19th century lodge house at the entrance to what was formerly the estate of the 2nd Earl of Grosvenor. It was a boys’ prep school, in the middle of nowhere. And that’s where I was educated from eight to 13 years old. Being a teacher’s kid is not a recipe for blending in at the best of times, and these were not the best of times. I was ginger, overweight, had knock knees and corrective footwear, and thick-lensed blue (yes, blue!) NHS glasses. I was like a cross between Ed Sheeran and Matt Lucas; although they didn’t exist back then, so let’s go with Su Pollard and Elton John, who did.

Missing out on the lead role

There was one day that is forever etched in my memory – the day I found out I hadn’t got the female lead in the school play. I was consigned to spending the final half of my final term watching Marcus Birkenstock-Smythe (not his real name, but he’d have fitted right in) lauding it over me as Sandy in Grease as I looked on, a tuneless and disgruntled T-Bird. Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs tells us that a fundamental requirement for human beings, once the essentials of food and shelter are met, is for belonging and love. The importance of being part of a tribe involves not just thriving but surviving, and if there was one thing I was missing, it was my tribe. (Photo: AFP via Getty)

Enough girls for a game of netball

Over my five years at the school, a handful of other girls joined, to the point that by my last year, we had enough girls for a whole game of netball. Imagine! (Albeit comprised of teams wildly differing in age, height and ability.) Despite having 148 acres of grounds, with expansive rugby, football and cricket pitches, our netball court was painted on the staff car park, meaning we could only play if the staff were willing to move their cars. Ever tried a reverse pivot round a Ford Pinto, with extra pressure not to miss a shot in case you dented the bonnet of the headmaster’s Volvo? It wasn’t just being a girl that set me apart. This was a private school, so by definition, most of the pupils came from families wealthy enough to afford the not-inconsiderable fees. Some of my classmates had parents who lived in other countries, or even had connections to celebrities or royalty. My peers were a worldly bunch; I had yet to set foot on a plane. (Photo: Danny Lawson/PA)

Misogyny largely absent from my childhood

Wrong income bracket, wrong gender, wrong weight. I remember a swimming class, when I was about 11, standing on the diving board with my whole class watching and as I started walking forward to take my dive, the swimming teacher saying loudly: ‘Look at her! Like a sack of potatoes’. Everyone laughed. I pretended to laugh, and just about managed not to cry. It was like a best-of anxiety dream mash-up; all I was missing was losing my teeth and being really late, but not being able to run. Only it wasn’t a dream. Nor was it always a nightmare. Aside from the wrong-gender bit, it was an excellent school, ahead of its time in many ways and encouraging us to pursue whatever it was we were interested in. And oddly, as I look back now, I realise that misogyny was largely absent from my childhood. I think it almost slipped people’s minds, including my own, that I was female (Exhibit A: not getting the female lead in school play). I was one of the boys, and therefore their equal. (Photo: David Jones/PA)

One of the boys

We had a debating society – of course we did, we were a posh school – and I got used to debating with privileged, educated boys (you know, the kind who would go on to eat Colin the Caterpillar cakes with other posh boys and girls under disco balls during a global pandemic). Often, I would win debates. I also became adept at holding my own in the less formal arenas of schoolboy lunch queues and locker rooms, where one’s quick wit might camouflage one’s other shortcomings. It was as a fish out of water that I developed the age-old survival skill of being funny. Who knew that a couple of decades later history would repeat itself, as I found myself the only woman in the boardroom. Instead of wondering whether I was good enough to be there, I didn’t give much thought to being any different. I was one of the boys, remember. I certainly had no qualms about making my voice heard amidst the strident male voices. I was the queen of boys’ debating, after all. My formative years spent in a gender imbalance helped steady the tiller on my impostor syndrome. (Photo: Stuart Gregory/Getty/Photodisc/Stuart Dee)

Prepared for male-dominated comedy clubs

It was a chance conversation with a woman that led me to an unexpected midlife pivot from boardroom to treading the boards. I had the privilege of getting to know the late, great Joan Rivers during my years as a TV executive, and it was she, then 81, who told me that at 45 I was not too old to try stand-up comedy. Hundreds of open mic gigs later, I traded male-dominated boardrooms for… male-dominated comedy clubs! And quit my secure job with share options just before a global pandemic shut down all live venues, proof that private education really doesn’t always produce geniuses. (Photo: Richard Baker/In Pictures via Getty)

A feminist in my second act

Comedy wasn’t my last reinvention. Like all the best nerdy bespectacled child protagonists, I needed a superpower, and mine was playing the piano. There was a beautiful Steinway grand piano in the school hall, which I would play for hours and hours – my escape hatch from not belonging. I might not have been able to offer the best rendition of “Look At Me, I’m Sandra Dee”, but I was pretty good at classical piano. I left that school at 13 and moved to a mixed secondary school. My piano playing died down as my social life picked up, until by 16 I had pretty much stopped playing. It was another chance conversation, this time with the very-much-still-alive Alistair McGowan, who himself reinvented in midlife from comedy to classical piano, that inspired me to find a piano teacher and start playing again. And last year I played in front of a few hundred people at the Ludlow Piano Festival, almost 40 years to the day after I had last played the piano in public. It’s good to remind myself, a feminist in my second act, that whilst I could live without the patriarchy, men and boys: I have much to thank you for. After all, for the longest time, I lived among you. And thanks to a conversation with a man, I’m hoping by the time I’m 65, I may be as good at playing the piano as when I was 11. (Photo: Natasha Pszenicki)