Joanne Martin made the headlines last week - for all the right reasons.

She's the young Glaswegian who's overcome all the obstacles - and initial rejections - to win a place at university to study medicine.

The story is especially meaningful for me. Like Joanne, I was brought up in Possilpark. Like her, I attended Springburn Academy - or Albert Secondary as it was known in my day.

Joanne is a great ambassador for her community and her school. But her story reminded me of a very different view of young women from her part of Glasgow.

This was the 1994 Channel Four programme "Possil girls: we are here", a documentary about three girls from "a notorious housing estate in Glasgow". I've never forgotten it. It's rankled with me all that time.

Maybe the academics who rejected Joanne's applications remembered it too. A would-be doctor from that place?

If you didn't see the programme, you can catch it on YouTube. It was the Scottish contribution to the "Walk On The Wildside" series broadcast throughout the UK, purporting to show the lives of young people on the margins.

It's a real hatchet job on Possil. Just about every possible negative stereotype is crammed into its half hour duration.

The three young women depicted don't appear to work. One is a single mother. They seemingly spend all their time swearing, messing about, boozing, partying and fighting.

Sectarianism isn't missed out. The documentary opens with the girls cursing an Orange Lodge parade in Ruchill Park. "Orange b*****ds," they cry. "We're f****ns. We're brought up to be bitter." One spits in the direction of the Orangemen.

The girls talk of violence and carrying blades. There's a description of a stabbing incident, one of them arrested for attempted murder. A night out in the local pub isn't much, they say, but at least it saves them from going into the city centre and getting involved in fights.

They describe a run-in with the owner of a kebab shop. They're even filmed shoplifting in the St. Enoch Centre. It's either a set up or the programme makers have aided and abetted a crime. I suppose having a film crew in tow is the perfect cover for a shoplifter.

The adventures of the young women are filmed against a background of a devastated environment of shuttered shops, graffiti-splattered close mouths, decrepit tenements and littered streets - an urban wasteland.

There's no counter story. No hint of anything positive. The only light relief is when the girls order knickerbocker glories in the Lido Caf�. Ah, knickerbocker glories in the old Lido!

My parents were still living in Possilpark in 1994. I visited regularly. The area had been terribly neglected, its problems huge. All indicators showed it to be one of the most deprived communities in Western Europe. Life there was indeed difficult. But the vast majority of Possil people did the very best they could with the poor hand dealt to them.

That's why it's great to see Joanne Martin get so much publicity. Despite all the obstacles, she achieved the grades needed for medicine. No-one in my year at school in the late 1960s matched that. Despite being rejected by four medical schools, she undertook work experience in Ghana and extra study at the Open University and eventually won a place at Aberdeen.

Well done, Joanne. It's a shame no-one will make a documentary about you. Too successful, insufficiently "notorious".

In 1994, there were plenty of Joanne Martins in Possilpark. And Joe Martins too. No-one made a film about them either.

That's irked me for over twenty years. But now we have, at long last, a fitting celebration of a real Possil Girl. Thank you, Joanne.