My Teenage Diary

Michael Winner proves shrewdly adept at self-deprecation. He only ever kept one diary, he tells host Rufus Hound, of a student trip he took to America in 1953 in his late teens, when it was a remote and romantic destination and the only plane route was via Iceland. As he reads from it here he keeps up a constant critique of his younger self for showing off, being arrogant, dumb. But he was already a published writer, having had a syndicated column since he was 14. No wonder he seemed so blasé about New York. "Pathetic, really," he says. But funny.

My Teenage Diary, now halfway through its second series, is proving a gentle, amusing listen. Julian Clary, last week, was a tad mournful about his young self, but this week Meera Syal positively revelled in reading out her entries, treating us to her original Midlands accent and 70s angst. It was lovely. Generally unsuccessful with boys, her teenage self did meet one fellow at judo she rather liked. "He is very intelligent, has epileptic fits and reckons God is a spaceman."

Radio review: My Teenage Diary

Diarrhoea, sprained ankles and collecting celebrity autographs: an insightful return to those teenage years.

Tonight's diarist is Meera Syal, remembering growing up in a small West Midlands village. The diaries (and she shows them to the studio audience, taped up to keep out strangers and in tiny writing) were her friends, she says. The year she's picked is 1976 and she confides her anxieties about her weight, followed next day by a rapturous account of eating a Chinese takeaway followed by chips. She's philosophical about how hard we are on ourselves in our teens, sharp about how much has changed in 25 years, honest about why she did so much sport.

My Teenage Diary - review

My Teenage Diary (Radio 4) returned yesterday with Sheila Hancock reading from her 14-year-old self's account of a trip to France.

Sheila Hancock reads out her diary to host comedian Rufus Hound and a vocal Radio Theatre audience. She's been keeping diaries since she was very young but, because a water main burst in her street, most of them were lost in the resulting flood. She shares the one that's still left, from 1947 when she was a scholarship girl at a grammar school which, she said, changed her life. One way was by a trip to France organised for her by her teachers. She was 14, on her own in a foreign country for the first time. Abroad was a different place then, as we hear.

The universal themes of sex, death and, er, middle-class parents who tut disapprovingly, run through the adolecent diaries of Richard Herring. He is the first brave soul to take part in this new series in which, for the schadenfeude of a delighted studio audience, comedians read from the diaries they kept as teens. I'm presuming a degree of self-censorship, but still Herring revels in mocking his teenage self's more embarrasing, pompous and even sociopathic tendencies. Teen angst has rarely been this funny.