My Mad Fat Diary

This week I've been enjoying My Mad Fat Diary.

On Monday E4’s My Mad Fat Diary will draw to a close. Spanning three seasons- two long, one short- the 90’s set comedy-drama was an antidote to the channel’s otherwise putrid outpouring. My Mad Fat Diary is no Made In Chelsea. This isn’t ‘aspirational tv,' instead it contains characters and values worth aspiring to.

Rachel ‘Rae’ Earl is the protagonist, the person who pens the mad fat diary. She has just been released from a psychiatric hospital, following her admittance for self-harming, and now wants to make up for lost time. Or as she puts it: “I’m 16. I weigh 16 and a half stone and I live in Lincolnshire. My interests include music, vegging out and finding a fit boy. Scratch that. Any boy. To quench my ever-growing horn.” Rae’s opening monologue sets the irreverent tone for what’s to come: this isn't going to be a naval gazing examination of self-harm so beloved by Year 9 girls, rather a raucous, riotous, up and at ‘em look at adolescence.

Rae's humour at play.

(Note: I’m worried the above comment about Year 9 girls is generalised, and therefore unfair. But as an English teacher, I’ve read more stories about self-harm than you’ve had hot dinners. And imaginary reader, you live in a contrived land where cold options don’t exist. That’s how many stories on self-harm I’ve read. For the record, I’ve also read too many stories by boys on gangsterism. My message to teenage boys would be: put the imaginary glock down and pick up your soul. Now you’ve picked it up, load the chamber and fire the page with musings on life, the universe and everything else. Teenagers, let's not live vicariously through a Daily Mail ‘yuff’ headline, reach higher for something purer and then write me a story. )

Sorry I had to get that off my chest. I'll continue now.

On leaving hospital Rae is re-acquainted with her school friend Chloe. She is Rae’s antithesis: conventionally pretty, conventionally popular and conventionally dressed. Through her, Rae meets a group of friends who don’t see Rae’s madness or fatness, but the vulnerable charm and rude eloquence we the viewer sees. As with all good shows, the secondary characters are pivotal to the programme’s success, and Mad Fat has them in spades. Chloe, mentioned earlier, is not the vacuous princess her appearance implies: she is vulnerability incarnate, concealing the pretty woman fear of being a woman of no importance. Archie is a homosexual in the 1990’s – an era of lad culture. His cowardly attempts to ‘out’ himself, although humorous, are played with an underlying sadness, recognising how society manacled gay men and women. And then there’s Finn, the apple of Rae’s eye; the man she wants to bite into, chew up and swallow whole- including the pips. (“His arse is so beautiful, sometimes I have to stop myself from crying when I look at it.”) Rae, overweight in body, underfed in confidence, is stuck in the “friends zone” with Finn, an intermediate state of limbo she longs to swap for sex heaven.  Her caustic response to this is both hilariously and horrifyingly relatable to anyone who has ever said ‘I love you’ in their head and not had the other person say it back.

The gang.

Over the three seasons, the course of true friendship never does run smooth as typical teenage infighting threatens to capsize hard earned camaraderie. Unlike the ephemeral relationships of Made In Chelsea though, wounds are licked, pints are raised and order is soon restored. As a secondary school teacher, My Mad Fat Diary is the kind of programme I wish students were watching. In an age where the ‘self’ is promoted through profiles, ‘selfies’ and (cough) blogs, we can sometimes spend too much time looking in rather than out at what’s around us. Mad Fat is a celebration of interdependence, of how our friends can make us stronger, happier and healthier. I’ll be very sad to see it go.

The whole of 'My Mad Fat Diary' is available on demand at All 4.