To introduce her 2002 film Anita and Me, Meera Syal journeys back to Essington in the Black Country - the mining village where she grew up. She describes how her childhood here inspired the coming-of-age novel Anita and Me, that Meera subsequently adapted into a film.

Meera opens up about how she was an outsider, with one foot in the Indian culture of her parents and the other in Essington's white, working-class community. She revisits the site of her old house - and discusses why she wrote Anita and Me: 'I wanted to record the lives of us - the first generation of British Asian kids born here'. Now, the story is part of the GCSE curriculum: 'that's monumental for me -we're here, we contributed.'. Show less