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 on the wall above my typewriter with other images that inspired and amused me. Another time, when I was doing loads of drugs, I made it on to an online Death List of the ten public figures most likely to turn their toes up in the near future; again, I found this highly entertaining, and went around boasting to my drug buddies about it.
‘Her career was a succession of burning bridges, which she sped away from, cigarette between her lips’
My husband said the timing of this obituary is meaningless. ‘It’s because you’re famous, like they kept the Queen’s obituary ready to go for ages.’ But I’m far more of the impression they’ve done it because of my Bit Of Trouble, the spinal abscess which struck me down at Christmas and has left me in a wheelchair, unable to walk. Of course, there are lots of people on wheels who live to ripe old ages. But I’ve managed to acquire a stage 3 pressure sore; if I ever upgraded to a stage 4, my life expectancy would be weeks. The comorbidities mount up when one is disabled, and I’m not sure a life of ceaselessly health fussing is a life I find viable. Besides, I’m a Believer, so death doesn’t hold for me the profound fear it does for some.
What a shame people aren’t asked to write their own obituaries. I’d be sure to note that:
‘Julie Burchill was born in Bristol in 1959, a treasured only child, into an immaculately working-class family and was expected to follow her parents on to the factory floor to make a humble living. She didn’t much fancy this, having been exposed to the works of Oscar Wilde and Dorothy Parker at a young age, due to her extensive library-going, so was very pleased when she got a job with the then-greatest pop paper in the world, the New Musical Express, aged just 17. She was so badly paid she had to scrabble in bins for deposit-back bottles in order to get the bus fare to work every morning.
‘At 19 she went to work for the Face, introducing club-kids to the wonders of Graham Greene and A.J.P Taylor, and at 24 into what was then known as Fleet Street. She worked for most of the national newspapers, and either got the boot or flounced off for pastures greener, greenback-wise. Her career went on the skids around 2004 after she sold her house to a developer for a large sum of money. She began what she called “lunching” – taking vast quantities of cocaine – which became a full-time occupation. Nevertheless, that year also saw the publication of her hit young-adult novel Sugar Rush, written while intoxicated after a few good lunches in the space of a month. It became a Channel 4 series, awarded Best Children & Young People Programme at the 34th International Emmy Awards in 2006.
‘From this point she also devoted a great deal of time and money to volunteer work and philanthropy, two of her great passions for 20 years, right up to her fatal injury in December 2024.
‘When the money ran out, Burchill attempted a re-entry to journalism. But her career was never to reach the heights of the late 20th century, when primetime television commercials advertised her silky, serpentine skills. It was partly her own fault for taking her eye off the ball, but also because journalism had changed from the drunken rough-and-tumble she revelled in. She represented the last gasp of a time in journalism when a working-class girl with no contacts and a sharp turn of phrase could just about slide in under the door before it slammed shut.
‘The two most destructive forces – apart from the internet – to hit journalism were just around the corner: wokeness and nepotism. Straight-shooting guttersnipes like Burchill who weren’t scared to say what they thought were no longer acceptable in the hollowed-out shell of Fleet Street. Luckily, she was still able to write for The Spectator, which saw the already excellent level of her prose improve due to the first-class writers she was competing with. Oft-libelled and defamed, she was proud of never running crying to lawyers, though she was sued by everyone from George Galloway to Steven Berkoff. In 2015 she created the phrase “cry-bully” and was often vilified by “this hideous hybrid of victim and victor, weeper and walloper”. Burchill was also the first person to use the phrase “the people’s princess” about Diana.
‘In her youth, she was a wild and dynamic presence on the Soho scene, primarily in the Groucho Club, where she held court with her staff from the Modern Review, the magazine she founded with her second husband Cosmo Landesman and her then best friend Toby Young. The Modern Review would go on to become vastly influential – none of the broadsheets would be slurping over Taylor Swift’s every move if not for this modestly circulated cultural colossus. The magazine ceased printing a few years after its inception due to Burchill’s habit of burning down her life every so often, to keep things interesting.
‘The Times journalist Caitlin Moran admitted to “embroidering” her semi-autobiographical novel How to Build a Girl, later a film, by using stories from Burchill’s life. Moran said of her protagonist: “A lot of mistakes that she makes are things I stole from other people’s lives… [Julie Burchill] was a hot working-class girl from Bristol who became more famous than most of the bands that she interviewed. When I was writing about Johanna, I thought it’d be far more fun to make her like Julie Burchill than me.”
‘It’s notable that Moran says she lifted from the life of Julie Burchill to write the book and film. Burchill did not try to get people to like her in the way that Moran does. For Moran, the journey has been more considered, softer at the edges, a combination of exaggerated working-class grit and middle-class whimsy. If you accused Julie Burchill of whimsy, she would hurt you. Burchill was acid undiluted. One television advert for the Guardian purported to show a CT scan of the columnist, complete with an oversized gallbladder. The voiceover explained that Ms Burchill was able to produce 13 pints of bile a day. Unsurprisingly, her career was a succession of burning bridges, which she sped away from, cigarette between her lips, laughing at how fast the kerosene went up.
‘If you accused Julie Burchill of whimsy,she would hurt you’
‘Unenvious to the nth degree (except perhaps of fellow Spectator writer Gareth Roberts) and highly secure in her own talent, Burchill went out of her way to encourage young writers – but perhaps the thing she was proudest of was being the best and most consistent tipper in the western world. Though journalists are rarely remembered long after their own era, she will certainly be read for longer than the legions of talent-free clowns and nepo-columnists who tried to cancel her, perhaps uneasy in their knowledge that without their contacts they would never have made it beyond the student rag.
‘Contrary to her spiky public persona, Burchill (or “Mrs Raven” as she preferred to be known) was easygoing and careless in later life, settling in Brighton and Hove in 1995 after meeting her beloved third husband. It was this carelessness, regrettably, which did for her, as the warning signs of her fatal affliction were dismissed for months as: “Just a bad hangover – it’s December, innit!”
‘She is survived by her husband, Daniel Raven, and by a legion of imitators.’
I think that’s fair; I’ve been a bit on the modest side if anything. I was hoping to get some of those amusing buzzwords in like ‘Did not suffer fools gladly’ (ill-tempered) and ‘flâneur’ (forever swerving work). But none really applies to me, lovable old grafter that I am. Anyway, whatever the newspaper in question comes up with, you can bet your sweet bippy that it won’t be anywhere as accurate as my own death notice – or as amusing.
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