Julie Burchill

Julie Burchill

Julie Burchill is a writer living in Brighton.

The glamour and grit of J.K. Rowling

Seeing that photograph of J.K. Rowling, I reflected gleefully that her journey from mousey, play-nice moderate to unapologetically glam and flamboyantly defiant fox is complete. It’s not often that glamour and righteousness come along in one person – but when it occasionally happens, as her caption said, ‘I love it when a plan comes together.’

The march of the trans mob is over

I wake up in a good humour most mornings, but today I started the day feeling that this country – which seems, in so many ways, to have been sleepwalking in a hall of distorting mirrors for so long – had taken a definitive step towards the overthrow of the crazed, tyrannical cult which has

Aimee Lou Wood should stop moaning about her teeth

Back in the twentieth century, there was a trend for beautiful female film stars to compare themselves to comical or unattractive animals. Michelle Pfeiffer insisted that she looked like a duck; Uma Thurman claimed to resemble a hammer-head shark. Not just actresses; there was a song by Pink, in which the then 23-year-old, size-ten blonde

Will I ever pee again?

When I was a girl, around 13 or so, my mum started calling me, half-enviously, half-fondly, ‘The Camel’, due to my ability to retain water. Every Saturday morning we’d go shopping at the Bristol city centre department stores; she’d need the toilet maybe three times, but I wouldn’t need it at all. ‘Have you “been”?’

Spare us from ‘nobituaries’

Sometimes it seemed to me as a young hack that writing obituaries must be the best job in newspapers. You can’t get sued – though people tend not to take the gloves off out of ‘respect’ and use ancient phrases like ‘bon viveur’ and ‘did not suffer fools gladly’ when everyone knows you mean ‘well-connected

I’ll never holiday again. I couldn’t be happier

Waking up to hear the ‘unprecedented’ news about Heathrow Airport, I felt a nanosecond of luxurious relaxation (albeit I’m not exactly over the moon about being in a hospital bed without the use of my legs). Of course I’d rather be scampering about an airport superstore being sprayed with scent by sexy shop-girls rather than

Finally, I’ve been forced to get a phone

I’ve never cared about status symbols, because my talent is the only one I need, so of course I wasn’t concerned with mobile phones, which were once tremendous markers of rank. Since then, not having a smartphone (or pretending not to) has become a thing some high-status people boast about now that 95 per cent

Kate Moss refuses to apologise

According to MailOnline, Kate Moss ‘sparked fan concern as she’s spotted looking “fraught” and “on edge” at Paris Fashion Week’. Good. Kate Moss is one of the very rare celebrities who I’m interested in – because she’s one of the very few celebrities who’s interesting – but in recent years she has become a bit

Why can’t pop stars just stick to their hits?

Any old fossil like me keen on harrumphing that popular music isn’t what it used to be will have taken a certain snarky pleasure on reading that, last year, no British act figured in the world’s top ten singles or albums for the first time since 2003. To be fair, 2003 wasn’t the best year

Who cares if Elon Musk has fourteen kids?

Historically, the richest and poorest men on the planet tend to father a lot more children than the men in the middle. With the former, its because there’s so much for the spawn to inherit, hence all the aristocratic Fitzes; the latter, because so many offspring die in infancy. The men in the middle tend

Netflix’s ‘With Love, Meghan’ is surreally dull

My experience of Meghan Markle, Duchess of Sussex and Muchness of Montecito, has I imagine been quite a common one. I started out full of enthusiasm that this apparently self-made counter-jumper (actually expensively educated by her poor doofus of a dad) was bringing a soupçon of style to the old Windsors. When it transpired that

What went wrong with The Archers?

I was once a fan of The Archers, to the extent that the Guardian quoted me in 2007 outlining how ‘an unlikely combination of support from the Queen and Julie Burchill led to the transformation of Britain’s ‘everyday story of country folk’ from a dull and tired format to its present cult status.’ Apparently I

The doomed union of Stormzy and Jeremy Corbyn

It’s been a lovely month so far for us free-thinkers, with the wokescreen tumbling down big-time. First the predicted winner of the Best ‘Actress’ Oscar – a biological man – was revealed to have been a bit of a social media ‘scamp’ in the past, with a soft spot for Hitler. And now the popular modern

The spectacular implosion of the Oscars’ first trans nominee

There are some Rude Awokening moments – when the whole damn #BeKind shebang collapses in on itself – that are so perfect, so freakishly unlikely, that they might be mistaken for a fever-dream on the part of we free thinkers. Often, because of their inherent silliness, the ‘trans community’ are involved in some way.  I’m

Rory Stewart is no match for JD Vance

I was highly amused to see that JD Vance has administered a right old ‘fagging’ – or whatever public school boys call it – to the ghastly Rory Stewart. Better known in some quarters as ‘Florence of Belgravia’, Stewart has developed a habit of dashing about in a dish-dash in search of broadcasting dosh, pouting

In praise of hospital food

I’ve been in hospital, bed-bound, for six weeks; because I can write it’s not so bad, but between deadlines time passes slowly, so landmarks in the day come to mean a lot. Most of all, I look forward to my husband visiting at 3 p.m.; secondly, the meds trolley trundling towards me like a dear

Donald Trump and the decay of left-wing thought

‘I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked,’ wrote Allen Ginsberg in his famous poem Howl. I thought of it the other day on reading a column by the alleged ‘comedian’ Stewart Lee in the Observer: ‘Nascent neo-Nazis are looking for confirmation bias for their worst instincts, but back in the

Neil Gaiman and the misogyny of the geeks

One of the worst ways to form a good first impression of someone is when they’re chasing the same woman as you, so in the interests of total clarity I’ll divulge that the first – and only – time I met Neil Gaiman was way back in the twentieth century, at the Groucho Club, when we