LUCY PORTER

When I was 16, my mate Carmel persuaded her uncle to lend a group of us his Spanish villa. We were all quite shy girls and not that popular at home, so we thought that abroad we could get tanned and kiss boys. We had loads of planning meetings and I put our travel documents in a folder with "Five Go Mad in Marbella" in bubble writing on the front. Unfortunately, the villa wasn't actually in Marbella, it was miles outside, up a steep hill. Thanks to my staff discount at Ravel, we'd all bought new plastic sandals. We walked into town once and were crippled.

After that, we stayed put and tried to sunbathe, but the place was riddled with flies and the retired British policeman next door kept asking if we were lesbians. For evening entertainment there was one novel that had been left in the villa – James Clavell's Shogun. I can still recite passages of it today.

Eventually, we decided to have a night out, but because we'd spent all our planning meetings talking about boys, we hadn't worked out our budget. B y the time we'd taken a taxi into Marbella and eaten chicken and chips, nearly all our money was blown. We went to a bar, shared one Bacardi and Coke and got chatted up by some lads from Preston. The boys said they would walk us home, but they accidentally smashed a patio door, the repair bill for which we were still paying months after we got back. I did snog one of them, though, so overall I considered it a very successful holiday.

SHAZIA MIRZA

I had a very sheltered upbringing. The most exciting thing we ever did was go on holiday with my parents to Wales, when I was six years old, to stay in a caravan for four days. I had always planned and dreamed that the minute I got any freedom I would go somewhere really exciting, somewhere Judith Chalmers had been.

I used to work in an ice-cream parlour as a student and two guys I worked with looked like John Lennon and Paul McCartney. They were hippies, into world peace, had beards and guitars and would go to Amsterdam every few months. They would tell me stories and show me photos of how great it was. I became intrigued and desperate to go.

None of my friends was available, so I went by myself, for five days. I didn't know the city at all, hadn't a clue where I was going to stay,couldn't speak Dutch and didn't know what was legal and what wasn't. I stayed in a youth hostel which, looking back, was like a prison cell, but at the time I thought it was really exciting, as I'd never shared a bunk bed with a stranger in a red-light area before.

I was fascinated by everything I saw. Every night, I walked round the red-light area, staring at the women in the windows. They got to know me and I thought I knew them. So one night I got my camera out and started taking pictures, so I could show my friends back home. All of a sudden, this woman jumped out from her window and ran after me through the red-light area; all of her friends also came running. There were about 20 women in underwear running after me across a canal, shouting and screaming. Then a huge man with gold teeth and a rottweiler came out of nowhere. They all surrounded me and shouted: "Camera!" I handed over the camera and they took the film out and threw it in the water.

I was so shaken I went to a coffee shop to have some tea and calm down. I bought a piece of cake to have with my tea, but didn't realise this was "Space Cake" and had grass in. It tasted nice but I felt really strange, so I decided to go on a boat ride to get some fresh air. On the boat, my head started spinning, and I tried to get off, while the boat was in mid-flow; the driver pulled me back by my Afghan coat to stop me falling in and I was carried to the nearest pavement.

Looking back, I can't believe how brave I was. Brave, fearless, independent or just stupid? I don't know which. But I'd never do that now. I had a sense of adventure and curiosity which deteriorates with age – it's a shame, but also life-saving.

ISY SUTTIE

It was the summer after my first year at Guildford School of Acting and I went to stay with my Slovenian friend, Majita, and her mum in a place called Nova Gorica for two weeks. One of the worst moments was when we went down to the river and she and her friends just took all their clothes off – men and women – and got in. They'd been talking about doing this, but because I hadn't understood them it came as a shock. I thought: "There is no way I'm doing that." I went as far as rolling my trousers up.

All of my luggage was sent to Vienna instead of to Slovenia, so for the first few days I had to wear this extra-large T-shirt with the Slovenian airline logo on it and some shorts that Majita gave me.At one point I was walking down the road, wearing my big airline T-shirt and shorts, cigarette in hand. Later on, Majita said to me that it had gone all around the town that I was a prostitute, because no women in Nova Gorica smoked on the streets unless they were prostitutes. I said to her: "Why didn't you tell me before I came?" I was really annoyed about it.

We had another argument when we were talking about beauty. "Your face…" she said and then she looked at my face for ages. "It's like your eyes are from one face, your nose from another face and your mouth is from another face." I got really upset. She felt that English people were too sensitive, because in Slovenia they say what they think.

One day, we went to the top of a castle in the village and I got so drunk I started talking to the moon. I lay down on a wall, looking at the moon, and nearly fell off. I could have died.

Majita and her friends just wanted to introduce me to their way of life, but I suppose it was really difficult being so drunk and then not being able to be understood by anyone, so I'd end up feeling quite alone. I spent a lot of time daydreaming and I planned out a new image for myself, which involved plaiting lots of thread into my hair. These daydreams were a "special place" I would go to whenever people were talking and I couldn't really understand anything that was going on.

Majita and I are still friends, but it was just that feeling of being stranded at times, when you couldn't make sense of anything.

STEPHEN K AMOS

Hoover was doing this amazing deal where if you bought one of its vaccuum cleaners you got two free return tickets to New York. I was one of the many hundreds of thousands of people who went out and bought a Hoover for that reason. I think it cost around £150 and two return flights to New York were probably about £500 each back then. It was a PR stunt that really backfired. It nearly bankrupted the company.

It was my first time going to New York and I took my younger brother. I was 19 and he was 16. It was everything I could have dreamed New York would have been – yellow cabs, people coming out of the subway, the big lights of Broadway and the seedy characters hanging around drinking beer out of brown paper bags. It was just like being on a movie set.

A very good friend of mine had emigrated to New York from England and was living on 34th Street, just up from the Empire State Building. So we stayed in his flat on the living-room floor. By coincidence, a woman called Delphine Manfield was staying at the same time. She's the person who first said to me: "Oh my God, you're really funny! Have you ever thought of doing standup comedy?" She was opening a comedy club in Putney, south-west London, called Big Fish and told me to come. That's how I got my first standup comedy gig.

We did all the touristy things – shopping for Levi's, wandering round Macy's, eating humungous pizzas and visiting Staten Island on the ferry.

I was used to travelling on the underground but nothing prepared me for the New York subway. It was a big maze. I remember one day I lost my brother after an argument and panic ensued. But 45 minutes later I found him, to his relief!

Chinatown was huge and I inevitably got lost because all the street names were in Chinese. I went into a shop and asked for Coke and got the most disgusted look ever, because they call it soda there. The shopkeeper thought I was after something else.

I sampled the clubs, too. It was in the days before the former mayor cleaned it up, so there was a lot of seediness going on.

We stayed for 10 days and the trip made me feel like a bona fide grown-up. It was the whole process of making your own decisions, staying out late and not worrying what anyone was going to say. There was no one there to tell me what to do.