People literally spit on me because I am ginger. I have photographed 300 redheads for my book and only one of them had had no negative experiences. A ginger-haired consultant told me people lean out of car windows to comment on his hair.

I was on the Tube last year, pregnant, and a lager lout started shouting: “Oi, oi, ginger, ginger! Do your collars match your cuffs?” Nobody came to help.

People have this obsession with whether the hair on your head matches your body hair. When I was at boarding school, a group of boys tried to pin me down on a ping-pong table to find out for themselves.

I was the only redhead in my year and they did everything they could to make me cry. We had a beautiful dining hall, like the one in the Harry Potter books, and when I walked in someone would shout “ginger” and they would all lie down on the floor to avoid catching “ginger disease”. It was quite a sight, seeing 700 people react like that.

But I would not have any other hair colour. We redheads are stronger biologically, we have thicker hair and we can withstand more pain than anyone else. Having just had a baby, I can verify that this is true: it was not that bad.

The abuse is a very British thing. I lived in America for a while, and as soon as I got there I was asked out left, right and centre. Americans see it as fiery and attractive. I married an American and we have just had a son. The only disappointment is that he is not a redhead.

Charlotte Rushton is a photographer and author of Ginger Snaps, a photographic record of British redheads.