I went to school with butterflies of fear every day for years - from primary school onwards - not just worried about being bullied by classmates, but by teachers.
I started visiting schools and talking to kids about bullying and what to do and how to deal with it. I don't think that there is one person who has lived life without being bullied. Everybody gets bullied - whether it's cyber-bullying or to your face or behind your back.
I know at first hand how the impact of being bullied as a teenager can quite literally last a lifetime and I thought that if we could involve well known ISPCC ambassadors perhaps people will think twice about bullying or indeed allowing bullying to happen.
I have suffered from bullying in many ways, from bullying in school due to my disability in reading, to digital abuse that I deal with on a daily basis. I'd like to tell the kids that are being bullied that no one should have to deal with the abuse, ever!
I've been actually really very pleased to see how much awareness was raised around bullying, and how deeply it affects everyone. You know, you don't have to be the loser kid in high school to be bullied. Bullying and being picked on comes in so many different forms.
Sexuality didn't come into it when I was bullied, but for so many years, being LGBTQ was one of the biggest things you would be bullied for at school. Hopefully, as time goes on, it will be a completely accepted thing that people won't have to think about.
In terms of bullying, there are so many new laws in America, I am not sure about worldwide, but in America, the laws for bullying are getting strict. And I am really excited of how strict they are and I think it has cut down on a lot of bullying. As a kid I was a bully and I was bullied. I lived both sides of it. To see what is being done with bullying now is super important.
Bullying is never fun, it's a cruel and terrible thing to do to someone. If you are being bullied, it is not your fault. No one deserves to be bullied, ever.
I had trained myself not to go to the bathroom throughout my elementary and junior high school years because I was bullied. And you don't understand why you're being bullied, so you just suppress it.
Being bullied is the reason I got into boxing. When I was 14, I was being bullied by a kid in junior high school. I wanted to do this the right way. So we went to a boxing gym. We boxed, I beat him up in the ring. He never bullied me again and I found my passion in the sport of boxing.
I went to a mixed school and I can't remember being bullied at school, ever. I was quite large, in those days. Usually, if you're going to be a bully, you'll pick on someone who is small. I didn't bully anybody, and I don't remember being bullied.
Bullying is bullying, man. Even the biggest of the bullies got bullied. And what was happening in school comes from the media, innit? It comes from TV and society.
And that really captures the difference for the bullied straight kid versus the bullied gay kid, is that the bullied straight kid goes home to a shoulder to cry on and support and can talk freely about his experience at school and why he's being bullied. [...] And I couldn't go home and open up to my parents.
Being in the public eye is easy for me because I come from a family of four generations of teachers, so I'm used to being around books and discussions. But to write, I very much need to be alone.
What people don't realize is that fame, whatever your worst experience in high school, when you were being bullied by those ten kids in high school, fame is that, but on a global scale, where you're being bullied by millions of people constantly.
Bullying is killing our kids. Being different is killing our kids and the kids who are bullying are dying inside. We have to save our kids whether they are bullied or they are bullying. They are all in pain.