PORING over my old 1979 New York High School yearbook, I turn to the cheerleading page and there is perfect Stacy Leder, head of the squad, her giraffe leg sticking out from her short skirt in a fake split, the other leg tucked up behind her, that genetically blessed cow with her gleaming, brace-free teeth, strawberry lip gloss, high cheekbones, that difficult haircut with Farrah Fawcett wings.

Then there was me, 5ft 4in, 95lb, no tits, Jewfro hair, orthodontically challenged, but I could do the splits, I could high-kick, I could do handstands and clamber to the top of a kneeling pyramid, and I was flexible to the point of sideshow material. But I didn’t make the squad because I looked about ten and was as sexy as some paper cups.

To be a cheerleader, you had to look virginal (but not childlike), preferably like Olivia Newton-John, but it was common knowledge that cheerleaders “put out”, or at least pretended to be willing. In my early twenties I showed the book to a friend and said “See these girls? Whores, the lot of them.” Those “didn’t make the squad” scars run deep.

Years later, mid-1980s, I relocate to England, and place myself within a circle of friends where cynicism, sloth, bad hair and thinness are prized, and I am assured that not only have I moved to a cheerleading-free island but, at the height of Smiths mania, a cheer-free island as well. They lied.

Cheerleading has been in the UK for more than 20 years now, and it is virtually unrecognisable as the highly-groomed bitchfest I knew it to be, having morphed into a bona fide sport peopled by gung-ho, can-do dancers and athletes — girls (and guys) who just want to have fun. There are squads everywhere, leaping their hearts out and winning international prizes. The Dance Xtream from Cheam have just come first in a big national championship in America., beating the Yanks at their own game. Just down the road from me in Mile End, Queen Mary, the University of London college, has a squad that was formed in September. When I meet them during rehearsals for a national university competition, they strike me as nice, ordinary, hard-working girls who have no problem doing the same short bit of a dance 50 times over to get it just right for their 2½-minute routine.

Two weeks later, at the competition in Reading, one of the Queen Mary’s Angels cheerleading squad has slipped out of the gymnasium for a fag break. She is half worried that it looks like bad sportsmanship, but she’s gasping for one. Another cheerleading team who have just given a spectacular performance come rushing out of the gym on an endorphin high. One gushes to the smoking Angel: “I just love your uniform.”

The Angel has a mouthful of smoke — not a good look for a cheerleader — but realises it is not enough to smile mutely by way of thanks. She has got to say something nice back. So she half swallows the smoke and sputters, “I thought you were great,” and she really means it, but then has a fit of coughing and immediately worries that the other girl thinks it is a sarcastic cough.

Such is the mood of enforced gaiety in the world of British cheerleading, which is not all big-boobed, bimbo-esque blonde bitchery the way it is in American films, that the lines between fake niceness and real niceness become blurred to the point of indistinguishable. It doesn’t matter. These young women, between the ages of 18 and 22, are genuinely happy when they are cheerleading, and exude a bonhomie and portable party atmosphere that is both affecting and infectious. They are Prozac on legs.

On the coach to the Angels’ first big university cheerleading competition in Reading, the excitement is palpable as the smell of hair gel (vital to keep the French plaits in place) wafts down the aisle, the Top 40 blares from the radio, and deft fingers apply powder blue showbiz eye shadow, to match the uniforms. One girl asks us all to shut up and turn the radio down so she can call in sick to work.

OK, we are not all going on a summer holiday, but really, give me these girls over the slightly younger, dead-eyed thugettes who ride my bus route and terrorise everybody who is not them, who slap strangers in the face while their mates take photos of it on their mobile phones. Queen Mary’s Angels, on the other hand, take all the good bits from both girl gangdom and cheerleading, leaving behind the attitude and high priestess of perfection exclusivity. You have to hang out with them only for a few hours to be convinced that cheerleading should be available on the NHS or part of the national curriculum.

British cheerleaders come in all shapes and sizes, though they are all sporty and fit. During the competition I will see a clinically obese young woman hurl herself backwards through the air, flipping over in rapid succession, defying the laws of gravity and giving lie to the idea that only leotard-clad ectomorphs look good doing this. I will see co-ed cheerleading teams, the men not the camp, moustachioed Village People I expected, but sturdy, strong, athletic lads who lift their female team-mates by gripping the tops of their bare thighs, by their big pants bottoms, by their crotches — with no suggestion of impropriety. I will see women standing on the shoulders of other women who are standing on someone else’s shoulders, and those top women flying down into waiting arms, like a much scarier version of those falling backwards trust exercises you do on office team-building excursions.

I will hear some, but not much, cattiness in the cloakrooms. One of the Angels is miffed but still composed as she relates how a “friend” from another team, who has seen the Angels in rehearsal, said to her: “No offence, but you’ve got cellulite and you are not a very good dancer.” Someone else observes: “That team that just came off, they were like (mimics big fake cheesy grin)”, an insult that rings hollow in a competition where you lose points for not smiling. And I will hear more ten-second samples of Britney Spears songs than is humanly decent.

There have been cheerleaders in the UK for about 20 years, coming in around the same time as US-style football was taking off here. At first they existed to cheer a team and gee up the crowd into some sort of frenzy, but as it grew, cheerleading became a self-contained sport comprising dance, gymnastics, stunts and cheering. And who do they cheer, if not teams? They cheer themselves and each other. During the competitions, an orgy of good sportsmanship and happy-clappy enthusiasm, there is even an award for the team that cheers other teams the most.