Scottish broadcaster Aasmah Mir says she 'hated' her skin colour as a teenager. The presenter and author, who was raised in Bearsden, had an idyllic childhood - until suddenly it all changed.
“I just loved being a child," she says. "I loved the rough and tumble of a seventies childhood. We all played in the burn. It was a very outdoors childhood.
“From zero to 10, I thought it was idyllic. There were always idiots who said weird things, but I was able to shrug a lot of that off.”
Then she went to secondary school. “You suddenly realise you’re different, you will always be different, you cannot change your skin, your hair, your body. You can't change it.
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"I look at my school photos. I was like a little bullet and I just stood out so much. I really did. So I was so aware of it. And I definitely hated the colour of my skin between maybe 12 and 17, I think. Maybe less. But it was that kind of period when I would think, ‘Oh God, I just want to be like everybody else.’
“I never went to a school dance, never had a date, never had a boyfriend and I remember thinking, ‘Am I ever going to?’”
A Glasgow Girl by Aasmah Mir is published by Aasmah Mir will be appearing at the Boswell Book Festival at 10.30am on May 12. Visit boswellbookfestival.co.uk for details
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