Teenager Josh Booth was bullied at school but now the 17-year-old is using his experience to help others. Josh, who lives in Worsley is determined to do what he can to help people who are being victimised. He has joined anti-bullying charity Beatbullying, and writes a column for their website. Bolton DJ Sara Cox is a patron of the charity. Here he writes about his torment at the hands of bullies and urges others who are suffering to contact the charity via its website.

"Bullying is a subject that I feel very strongly about because I was bullied severely all the way through school.

Every day when I went to school I would be name called, laughed at, pushed and shoved as I walked down the corridor. To me that was normal because that is what I was used to happening to me when I went to school.

I never had any friends I was always on my own, everybody else made friends very quickly and I have always wondered how people make friends so easily.

For the majority of the first three years of high school I wasn't there, I was always off sick. The doctor told me that I was falling ill so often because of the stress of the bullying.

I wasn't always targeted by the same person or group of people. It was by a lot of people in different years, which in my opinion is worse than being bullied by just one certain person. When I was at school, when I knew I would have to walk past a certain class, I would take the longest way round to avoid having to walk past it.

Whenever my mum went into the school to see my head of year about the bullying, nothing happened. There was only one teacher who actually did something to stop it. Other than her, the school seemed to only care about their public image rather than their pupils.

The last two years of high school were the best, I finally had a great set of friends and most of the people that bullied me had left, but there were still some people who carried on.

Before I started year eleven I got into contact with Beatbullying and pitched them a idea about writing a column to give other teenagers who are being bullied advice. Now I write a monthly column on their website.

Since I started my column I have discovered what a huge problem bullying is. The reasons people bully other people is because they are afraid and don't like the fact that the person they are bullying is different in some way.

I was bullied because I have cerebral palsy which affects my walk. Others are bullied because they are rich, poor, overweight etc. Teenagers find something different about people and use it to victimise them. Jealousy is one of the main reasons why people are bullied.

People are jealous because others have things they don't, and they don't like that so they pick on them for it. I believe people bully others because they are very insecure in themselves, that they bully others to hide their own insecurities. Bystanders are just as bad as the bullies.

I can't believe people who are supposed to be your friends stand there and let you get called names or beat up.

Because of what I went through when I was at school I find it very hard to make new friends. When I started college in September of last year I was always on my own. So I decided to leave and I started a writing course at home.

Bullying is people's ignorance. It is a reflection of their own troubled spirit and ignorance rather than a reflection of you."

Statistics show that one in two students experience occasional bullying during any school term One in 10 pupils in secondary school are bullied more than once or twice at least in any term, some research says one third of secondary students are bullied during the course of the school year.

Nicola Schofield manager of Bolton-based Bully Free Zone said: "People who have suffered bullying in the past do often go on to help others. We have a number of people who may have been bullied at school who work with this organisation to tackle bullying.

"Because they have gone through the same experience, they can empathise with them."