About us

What is Oh Dear Diary?

It’s very simple: people get together and read aloud extracts from their teenage diaries.

Why?

Oh Dear Diary logo

  • It’s funny
  • It’s cathartic
  • It’s bonding
  • It’s affectionate
  • But mostly it’s funny

Oh… like Adrian Mole!

Kinda. Well, no, because that was fiction. This is fact. Bum-clenching, teeth-grinding, heart-breaking FACT. Everything read out or shown at Oh Dear Diary is real.

Whose silly idea was this?

pgVUD1NFMine. Hello. I’m Emma Wright (you might know me as editorialgirl on Twitter).

The idea for Oh Dear Diary came about after a couple of evenings where friends and I took it in turns to read out extracts from our teen diaries. We were surprised at how funny we found it and agreed it was worth sharing with a wider audience. I talked about it for a good two years before I finally took the plunge and booked a room. The first Oh Dear Diary took place at Cherry Reds in Birmingham in October 2014 as part of the Birmingham Comedy Festival.

Tess

(Photo: Tom Kelly)

Aaand it’s sort of snowballed from there!

After the success of the first Birmingham show, we held a second, and Tess Simpson (left) from the wonderful If Destroyed Still True came on board as our Northern Correspondent to help put on Oh Dear Diary in Manchester too.

Click here to find out about future events.

Reviews of Oh Dear Diary

Review of Oh Dear Diary 3, Manchester 14/07/15, on “Gin Fuelled Bluestocking”.

Review of Oh Dear Diary 4, Birmingham 03/10/15, on “The Reviews Hub”.

Keep in touch

If you’d like to read your diary at an Oh Dear Diary event, you will need to register in advance. Click here to find out more about reading your diary at a live show.

We also have a Twitter account at @ohdeardiaryuk and a Facebook page at www.facebook.com/ohdeardiaryuk so you can follow us and like us and all the rest of it.

Is this anything to do with that other teenage diary show/that thing on the radio/etc?

Nope! We came up with Oh Dear Diary completely independently. I now know the idea of reliving teenage diaries isn’t new but, if anything, it shows there’s an appetite for the idea!

When I first had the idea of Oh Dear Diary, I googled to see if the “live reading” thing was already being done, and that’s when I read about about allll the diary reading events across the US. However, the UK only appears to have Cringe, which runs events in London. More recently, Mortified Live put on a London show, but they haven’t ventured any further afield in the UK either.

North of the Watford Gap… we are here for you!

One Response to About us

  1. Hi Emma,

    You found me earlier today on Twitter and have been distracting me from work ever since! Just wanted to say that this is a great idea. I’ve been aware of Cringe for quite a while but, not being anywhere near London, it’s not something I’ve been able to go to. Not that I’m near Birmingham either but I’m pleased to see similar things happening outside of London.

    It’s one thing hiding behind a computer screen but another to read a teenage diary out in public so I think you and anyone else willing to do so is very, VERY brave!

    Good luck with it all 🙂 I’ll stop stalking you across the internet now.

    Bye!

    Mollie x