Do the words “nunga-nungas” mean anything to you? What about “snogging scale”? “Fabbity fab with knobs on”? For a generation coming of age in the mid-Noughties, this language crept its way into playground conversation and gossip sessions. It was the product of Angus, Thongs and Perfect Snogging, Gurinder Chadha’s clunkily titled yet much-adored teen movie that perfectly captured the mortification and mundanity of that awkward age. This was the film we piled into cinemas to watch, then pored over at sleepovers and quoted ad nauseum. Fifteen years later, many still return to it, branding it their ultimate comfort movie.
Billed as a teenage answer to Bridget Jones’s Diary, Angus… was based on a teen lit series by the late author Louise Rennison, one that began with 1999’s Angus, Thongs and Full-Frontal Snogging. Rennison’s books centred around Georgia Nicholson, a distinctly normal 14-year-old girl obsessed with boys, periods and the size of her nose. To this day, Rennison’s 10-book series, sharp and witty beyond their hero’s years, remain the only novels to ever make me laugh out loud.
