Don’t know if anybody watches Ackley Bridge, I do, from the start. Its about a secondary school in a working class, deprived area somewhere in the north of England.

Couple of weeks ago one of the kids got a place at Oxford, everybody was made up, her, her family, best mate, teachers. What an achievement. She was over the moon, made up to have got in, but panicking about leaving her family and friends.

Flash forward to last weeks last episode, she decides not to go, she cant leave everybody, her mum wont manage without her. Then she doesn’t get the A level grades, so she cant go anyway. So her mum sets off for Oxford, tells the lovely lady in admissions that her daughter is amazing, but she had a bit of bad luck, was in a car crash, her best mate died, ended up getting her into Oxford after all.

When it came to leaving, her mum threw her a goodbye party and made a speech about how proud she was, what an opportunity she had been given, as a mother how she wants the best for her.

I ended up in floods of tears, not just because of the programme but because I don’t have my family around me, and I have no way of knowing what my mum and dad would think of me going to university at my age.

My mum would probably tell me I should have done it years ago like she told me to, she never, she told me to be a hairdresser, which I did and hated it. I dont know what my dad would think, but everybody else would. That was his thing, he’d tell everybody else how made up and proud he was of us, and I mean everybody, people on the bus, in shops anybody he met.

What I have got is Dan, and I know hes proud of me, cos he told me, and he told me I should be proud of myself. And I’ve got you, my tribe, my friends, my support network. You are there every time I need you, without fail. We laugh, we cry, and we drink gin together, and I appreciate every last one of you. I’m so glad you are coming to University with me, we’re gonna have a ball.