SADIE HASLER: All-female comedy show reminded me of how I grew up in a girl’s world...

It may have taken endless revision, sitting in a hall with a bunch of kids once a year for 24 years, and latterly some serious backhanders to the local authorities, but finally, now, aged 34, I can count Key Stage 2 examination glory among my successes.

Not really. I passed first time, aged ten. I think my parents would have taken me back to the shop if I hadn’t, so the pressure was on.

That pass marked the start of a change. Because it meant I got into my local girls’ grammar school of choice, and that ultimatelywould find myself in the company of, well, just...girls. How would I fare without boys? I wondered.

Who was going to do all the orange squash belches after neckingaKia-Ora carton in one? Who was going to chomp Space Raiders into mulsh then flob it on whoever had the newest shoes? Would all that stuff have to stop now that I was a lady-in-training?

Well, of course, I fared very well. I loved my new friends, I worked harder and performed better than I ever would have if I’d had the distraction of boys once hormones kicked in, and it just became “normal”.

Boys were creatures on the bus, theywere weekend things. And there were discos with the boys’ school to hook me and my pals up with studs. We pretty much all took it in turns to snog the same set of boys for about three years. Value for money.

When I left my cosy girls’ grammar years later and went to university, I had a rude awakening.

Here was I with my arms full of books, being met by men doing their flies up as theywalked down the corridor.

Here was I sitting in a lecture hall, smelling the manly composites of Lynx, yesterday’s T-shirt, and hour-old farts. Here was I suddenly conscious that someone with stubblewas staring at my boobs while I squinted at lessons on the whiteboard.

And then I would leave seminars to go back tomy halls of residence where there were...more boys. Men. I did not live with men. It had mostly been my mum, my sister, and I since I was five. How odd it all was.

But I adapted. We all do, all the time.

Since then I have not really encountered any environments that divide the sexes likemy days at school. Men are everywhere now, we’re all mixed up in the jumblesome stuff of life, and so I have similarly not had that sense of being part of a singularly girly world.

Until last week.

I have been contributing to a new magazine set up by Sarah Millican.

It’s called Standard Issue. It’s a fabulous mix of stuff by some brilliant ladies and I am very privileged to write for them. It’s been nine months – long enough to brewababy – of hardwork.

To celebrate, last week Standard Issue stagedamassive gig for Comic Relief, and while watching the cream of the country’s female comedians take to the stage, I felt that feeling again. Despite there being men in the audience, it felt like the best kind of girls’ club.

Not to the exclusion of boys – all are welcome in our treehouse – but something for, by, and of our own sex.

And it sort of felt like school, but it felt grown-up and important and inspiring, and it definitely felt like home.

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