Passed/Failed: 'University was a very druggy place'

Rosie Boycott was the first female editor of a national daily paper. She co-founded the feminist magazine Spare Rib at 20 years old, and later Virago Press. She edited Esquire, The Independent on Sunday, The Independent and the Daily Express. She was one of the experts in Test the Nation on BBC1, presented A Good Read on Radio 4 for three years and Life etc on BBC2, and appears regularly on The Late Review. She will present Radio 2's Night Waves in May.

Rosie Boycott was the first female editor of a national daily paper. She co-founded the feminist magazine Spare Rib at 20 years old, and later Virago Press. She edited Esquire, The Independent on Sunday, The Independent and the Daily Express. She was one of the experts in Test the Nation on BBC1, presented A Good Read on Radio 4 for three years and Life etc on BBC2, and appears regularly on The Late Review. She will present Radio 2's Night Waves in May.

When i was 10, my parents moved to Shropshire and enrolled me in a school - I've forgotten its name - which I hated so much that I used to hide up an oak tree or make myself sick to avoid going there.

After one miserable term, my parents took me out and sent me to St Mary's near Tenbury Wells, Worcestershire. It was a fantastic prep school, the only school I loved. There was a wonderful headmistress who liked me; I was head girl and champion at sports. I was very good at maths and at most things.

After a year and a half, I passed the entrance exam to Cheltenham Ladies' College. I was put in a class a year ahead of my age; all the other girls had best friends and wrote in Italic.

For a 12-year-old I had good, neat handwriting but I was forced to spend Saturday mornings learning calligraphy. My handwriting went all round the houses; it was a mess and still is.

I was bullied; I was homesick; I found the whole place very alien. My mum used to send me a postcard every day for my first term, but I had to ask her to stop because everyone laughed at me.

It was a very intellectual school and a high proportion of girls went to Oxbridge, but you could crawl through Cheltenham Ladies without being noticed. I did very badly and slid down the ladder. They wouldn't let you take an O-level if they thought you were going to fail; I had to give up French at 14, which was criminal. I only did five O-levels. I left at 16 after a year of a dunce's course, which only three of us did: English and biology A-levels. The school said: "Why don't you do a secretarial course? You could probably manage that." In fact, I stayed at home for a year and did my A-levels: two Es.

Then I spent a year at Davies's, a crammer in Victoria. I did no work at the two A-levels - maths and British constitution - and hardly ever went in; I didn't even show up to the exams, so I failed, obviously. Then I went as a boarder to a crammer in Market Harborough. I lasted three weeks. Suddenly, I noticed my parents' car in the drive. I was called into the head's office and accused of smoking dope and causing trouble. (I now plead guilty as charged.)

Then I had a kind of sea change. I was pissed off with myself and thought, "I can't go on being kicked out of schools". I went to Shrewsbury Technical College and my parents found me brilliant lodgings with a retired maths teacher. For a term, and the bit of the summer term before the exams, she would cook me dinner and we'd stay up till midnight doing old maths papers. At the college, the teachers were fantastically encouraging and I was appreciated as an eager beaver.

I got two As, with an S in maths. I trotted off to Kent University to read maths. Kent was quite hip at the time but it was a very druggy place and I found myself taking a lot of drugs. I suppose I should have made some different friends.

I'd proved that I could get into university and I knew I'd get a degree - but so many exciting things were happening in London in 1971. At 19, two-thirds of the way through the second term, I packed my car and went to London. I lived in my car for two weeks.

Everybody I know went to university. I often think I should go and do it now.

Jontysale@aol.com