Last year, it took me a grand total of three weeks to make the olive costume, Georgia Nicolson’s papier-mache creation from Angus, Thongs and Perfect Snogging. Night and day, I slaved away, dipping strips of newspaper into a mix of flour and water, then patting it onto a giant-sized balloon. Never have I defined myself as anything close to arty. So why did I decide to dedicate a significant portion of my life to an elaborate craft project? The answer, of course, is simple. The olive costume is iconic, as the signature feature of the greatest teen movie ever made.
Just ask any girl who grew up in Britain in the noughties, and they’ll recognise the image: Georgia Nicholson, played by Georgia Groome, frantically running through the streets of Eastbourne dressed as a mammoth green hors d’oeuvre. Angus, Thongs and Perfect Snogging, the film based on the first two books in Louise Rennison’s series, was studied at our teenage sleepovers. We pored over it, reciting its lines as if they were from a sacred text. Even now, I can reel off the classic quotes without thinking. “Boys don’t like girls for funniness,” if you didn’t already know.
