Polly Vernon

It was my birthday last week. I didn’t have a party. I never do. I’m scared NO ONE will come.

I was born in August, on a day that falls on, or damn near, the last bank holiday of the year; when I was a kid, no one did come to my birthday parties. They were all always on holiday, only I assumed they just didn’t like me, which was shit, and those sorts of sadnesses, those forging senses of how lovable you are, how popular, how readily celebrated, they stick to a person. So it is that I find myself supremely birthday-unconfident. At the same time, I am supremely body-confident. I suspect I shouldn’t be. Even now, in these Bo-pos, whack-your-cellulite-on-instagram times, I know I’m supposed to secretly hate my bod in a bazillion different ways, which I catalogue every time I look at myself in the mirror, before swiftly moving on to feeling all bad feministy about the self-loathing. But, I don’t hate my body. I like it.

I don’t like my nose, mind. I can’t work out if it’s getting bigger, or if my recently acquired selfie habit is distorting my sense of it with exaggerating proximity to my iphone camera. I’d worry about it more if I hadn’t just remembered how funny I am. You know how women aren’t supposed to be funny? I am hilarious! Which is useful, because I depend on funniness for a living. On which, you also know how women talk about having ‘imposter’s syndrome’? Feeling professionally fraudulent, like they’re constantly on the brink of being exposed, then fired? I have the opposite of that. I think people often underestimate how good I am at this lark.

But then, I think the only reason I’m good at this lark is because I’m so bad at literally every other lark. The amount of stuff I never do, for fear of screwing it up and letting people down/killing them! I won’t: book group holidays, agree to bring a ‘dish’ to someone else’s dinner, drive a car, babysit anything under the age of nine. Public speaking, on the other hand… Mate, I’d pretty much pay you to let me public speak!

I love flying, but get panic attacks in lifts; I’ve asked pop stars ’n’ politicians about their sex lives, then eaten undercooked chicken in a restaurant cos I thought the waitress would hate me if I complained. I am both supremely, swaggeringly overconfident – and absolutely not at all. On the occasion of Grazia’s confidence issue, I should like to come out. Everyone? I’m pretty sure I’m bi-confident.