Julie Burchill is a writer living in Brighton. Her Substack is julieburchill.substack.com.
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We’re woefully resigned to the strange situation whereby if an alien landed, they’d believe that being famous was hereditary, like being royal. But when I looked at the Wikipedia page of Louis Theroux, I almost fell out of my wheelchair chuckling. Not only is he the son of the ‘noted travel writer and novelist’ Paul
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I thought that maybe being in a wheelchair would stop my louche lunching ways, but somewhat to my own surprise (though not that of my mates, I’d wager), this isn’t the case. ‘You push – I’ll pay!’ has become my battle cry. But as I am wheeled about at this time of year, a pucker
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Reading about the break-up of the 19-year marriage of Nicole Kidman and Keith Urban, I was interested in some comments from our old mate ‘A. Source’ about the possible cause. According to the Sun: ‘Keith put a brave face on Nicole’s raunchy screen roles and all the comments she’d make about her sexuality. But he didn’t
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I’m of the opinion that an overriding interest in ‘porn’ of any kind (I love the way we use the affectionate diminutive about something which ruins so many lives – like calling him ‘Fred’ West) isn’t especially good for the long-term happiness of people. But of course some sorts are worse than others. At the top, you’d
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When I invented the term ‘cry bully’ in this very magazine ten years ago, I had no idea how much bigger both theory and practice could get. It already seemed to have reached such a tipping point that surely ‘The Grown-ups in the Room’ of the time, or subsequently, would put a tin lid on
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‘I was born to play Lady Bracknell,’ Stephen Fry swanked recently, in an interview to mark a new production of The Importance of Being Earnest, running until January. I can’t be the only one to greet the idea of another round of Fry interviews with a desire to go to bed and not come out
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There’s was so much to loathe and laugh at in Peter Mandelson’s contribution to Jeffrey Epstein’s ‘birthday book’ (which inadvertently has turned into more of a ‘burn book’). But the words ‘yum yum’ were, for me, in a league of their own. Whatever they were referring to – it could have been the peachy posterior of
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Call him a tech bro’, a hustler or even – hiss! – a Starmerite. But my word, I’m keen on my MP – and recently promoted business secretary – Peter Kyle, the Honourable Member for Hove and Portslade. That doesn’t mean I voted for him last time; I wasn’t going to assist Robbie the Robot
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When I was told that a newspaper had asked someone to write my obituary, my first instinct was excitement. I’m not easily offended and I’ve always been an attention-seeker. Once, when I was fat, a magazine printed a photograph of Jabba the Hutt and said it was me. I cut it out and pinned it
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The flat in Hove which Angela Rayner infamously purchased is literally two streets and five minutes’ walk from my place, if I could walk. When I was planning to buy an apartment shortly into the new century, I looked at one in that street and thought: ‘Whoah – that’s a bit steep!’ I’d just sold
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It’s strange to think that the British people were once addressed as adults by those who governed them. In theory, this shouldn’t have been the case; in previous times, there was more social rigidity and more class deference. But everyone from weather forecasters to prime ministers somehow resisted the temptation, until relatively recently, to speak
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I’m not awfully keen on family members of famous people putting themselves in the picture; nepo babies are the worst, the equivalent of Japanese knotweed when it comes to the landscape of modern popular culture. But pushy parents are annoying too: Stanley Johnson and the wittering senior Whitehall jumping on the bandwagon when they should
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Seeing those photographs of Angela Rayner on Hove beach in broad daylight drinking a vast glass of rosé (‘day wine’ as my lot call it) I felt a rare flash of FOMO. I met a lot of politicians when I worked as a political columnist for the Mail on Sunday in my twenties, and I’ve
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Bonnie Blue is an It Girl. But she’s not an It Girl in the way we used to recognise them. Bonnie Blue is an It Girl because she’s written about as a thing, not a person. She’s an object, everything that’s bad about women, sex, modern life. She’s not really considered to be a human
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When I was young, the song ‘The Laughing Policeman’ always spooked me a bit; I’ve grown out of most fears, but this one if anything has grown over the decades. Because never before has it seemed more obvious that the police are amusing themselves with us – and the end results, far from beingamusing, are
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I couldn’t help sniggering when I read in the Guardian that Tony Robinson, the diminutive (5’4) droll most famous for being in Blackadder, is venting his miniature wrath over the tendency of women on dating apps to desire men taller than them: ‘Nowadays, you don’t pick on people’s looks, do you? It’s like kind of a
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A recent, rather beautiful piece published here told of how the writer, Druin Burch, initially somewhat alarmed by the variety of naked bodies he unexpectedly encounters while swimming in the Med (‘I wouldn’t mind if it was only young women,’ he says to his wife) comes to appreciate the loveable imperfection of the human form.
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On reading that Dean Cain (the actor who played the television Superman) had become an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent, I felt a thrill of insurrection – so hot on the heels of the revelation that naughty Sydney Sweeney is a registered Republican! I imagined Rosie O’Donnell crying into her morning decaf, Lizzo swearing at
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I love dogs. I love lunching. I love seeing dogs in restaurants where I’m lunching. But one thing I don’t love one bit is a dog being brought to a luncheon which I’m participating in – and, most likely, paying for. Luncheons are for humans – not for our furry friends. Let’s face it, it’s
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When I was recently in hospital for almost six months, one of my closest and most impish friends – who knows me very well and figured that I wouldn’t be up for anything serious – would bring me the novels of Betty Neels. Neels is largely forgotten now, but between 1969 and her death in
