Grace Dent's Guide to Growing Up a Girl

"I was in Methodist 22nd Brownie pack and a Seconder in the Pixies. I am still angry I was not made Sixer. I think my whole career is based on avenging this injustice."

Memories flood back for writer and columnist Grace Dent as she returns to the childhood bedroom-in-her-head, with a selection of programmes celebrating growing up a girl.

Over three hours, Grace stomps about with Pippi Longstocking in The Strongest Girl in the World, escapes into the world of girls' comics and Girl magazine with 43 Years in The Third Form featuring Rosanna: Schoolgirl of Mystery and Angela: The Air Hostess! It was the 1950s. Decades later, Grace also discovers: What Is It About Judy Blume?

Away from books, Meera Syal explores the pitfalls of female friendship in Anita and Me; Emma Kennedy endures acute adolescent embarrassment on a disastrous camping holiday in the 1970s with The Tent, The Bucket and Me; Josie Long reveals why she never should've gone out with Luke in My Teenage Diary and Everything But the Girl's Tracey Thorn warns of the perils of 'tarty trousers' in her musical memoir Bedsit Disco Queen.

Along from archive over the decades - we enjoy a gloriously unselfconscious Grease sing-along and discuss the difficulties of finding a husband at finishing school. There's also a 10-year-old aspirant housewife, a champion tea-making brownie and a schoolgirl hoyden turned junior suffragette.

Produced for BBC Radio 4 Extra by Testbed Audio.