‘Fish-faced moll’, ‘rooting machine’, ‘melting our tits off’: with its raw, in-your-face dialogue, the film version of Gabrielle Carey and Kathy Lette's classic novel, Puberty Blues, has also become a cult classic.

In this lively and honest account, writer and broadcaster Nell Schofield recalls how she won the role of Debbie and what it was like on the set. She looks at the parallels between the film, the book and her own surfside teenage years, and at the extraordinary response the film generated. It’s a story as idiosyncratically Australian as the film that showed everyone who ever had any doubt that chicks can surf.