We love the singing, the dancing and have a huge crush on Matthew Morrison

  but it’s the fact we can finally laugh at our school days that has us hooked on TV smash Glee

By Kate Faithful, 30/01/2018

Hello. My name is Kate and I'm a Gleek. And if you've got no idea what I'm talking about - oh hell to the no! Where have you been?

Glee is the funniest, most heart-warming show on the box, and it's already won an army of fans in Britain and the US (that's if armies went around doing jazz hands and singing harmonies).

The show follows a bunch of oddballs in an American high-school choir. And mixing catty comedy and camp West End versions of Beyoncé's Single Ladies and Journey's Don't Stop Believin', it makes X Factor look like Newsnight Review.

So why all the fuss? Well, the reason I'm a 100 per cent paid-up member of the Glee fan club is because of the way it celebrates the realities of school life.

Sue Sylvester, the protein-shake-slurping cheerleading coach who makes Simon Cowell look like a pussy cat, puts it best by comparing high school to the class system: "You have your jocks and your popular kids up in the penthouse. Your invisibles and kids playing online trolls and creatures, bottom floor. Glee kids lie in the sub-basement."

It's these stereotypes that remind us of our youth: the hunk, the goddess, the geek, the goth, the scruff, the slapper, the fat kid, the gay guy and the swot - oh, hello, that's me!

Kate at school aged 16

Yes, Glee will whisk you back to a time that for most of us was less than perfect. Lucky then, that enough time's passed for us to find it all very funny.

While the jocks at my school didn't lock a wheelchair-bound boy in a Portaloo, they did duck-tape a geek into a phone box, then throw fire crackers at him through holes in the glass. And then there was me, desperately trying to get in with the cool clique - and failing. So, while they snuck ciggies behind the bike sheds, I holed up in the library. Why wasn't there a choir of lovable outcasts to start belting out Defying Gravity whenever I was feeling low?

Glee also highlights what's wrong with the British education system. Let me spell this out for you, Gordon Brown: Not. Enough. Show. Tunes.

The teens in Glee - from swotty Rachel to jock Finn and camp Kurt, who "self-identifies as a soprano" - all escape their high-school traumas through song and dance.

If only I could have done the same. Like Rachel, I was "just a small-town girl, living in a looonely world." Haywards Heath, West Sussex, to be precise.

I'd have given anything for a Mr Shuester (Matthew Morrison) to set up a choir. But where's a musical, hunky Spanish teacher when you need one? Instead, I penned poems about my miserable existence - they're blimmin' hilarious!

Without a Glee club, it was hard for a nerd like me to mix with cool kids. Of course, the fact it took years to grow into my huge teeth was another factor.

After crossing our school queen - probably because of a life-or-death matter, like refusing to lend her my Just 17 - her mate cracked an egg on my head on the way to school.

And Rachel thinks it's bad when the cool kids throw their slushies on her? I feel your pain, sister.

Like in Glee, anyone in a crop top who could shake their bum to Salt-N-Pepa taped off the radio got the boys' attention. I failed on both counts. Yet, maybe if we'd had a Glee club at school, I'd have lured a lad - like Finn - into my clutches. I love the idea that the school hottie might get with an 'invisible'.Then again, maybe it's best that I didn't because if there had been, I wouldn't have been able to resist sharing my poetry with him. And if I'd done that I'd probably still be cringing now.