Julie Burchill is a writer living in Brighton. Her Substack is julieburchill.substack.com.
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
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
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
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.
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
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
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
I’ve been musing recently how people in the public eye can go ‘downhill’ in two main ways. One can make big, brash, ‘bad’ decisions, ignore well-meaning advice and render oneself an outlaw well into old age, unacceptable in polite company and rejected by one’s more pusillanimous peers. I’ve seen totem poles less wooden than Emma
Though I’m no fan of Donald Trump, time and again I’m delighted by the alternately crazy and sane things he says, and the way he knows the difference; he’s the antithesis of our politicians, who say crazy things they sincerely believe are sane. This week he spoke to the BBC’s Gary O’Donoghue, who asked him
As Wimbledon reaches its climax this weekend, those of us neither interested in tennis, nor in taking a fortnight off work for solid perving purposes, are delighted it will soon be over. I couldn’t care less about the tennis, but the comings and goings in the slightly obscene-sounding ‘Royal Box’ are impossible to escape from.
Though I’d never read any books about Oasis before this one, I’d have bet it would be impossible to write boringly about the band – for two reasons: namely Noel and Liam Gallagher. As the most entertaining men in music, the former could be talking to a goldfish and still end up riffing in an
I can’t say I was gobsmacked to read that Miley Cyrus and Naomi Campbell seemed more interested in each other’s company than in their fans when they held a ‘meet and greet’ in London to sign copies of their new single. Some fans complained, accusing Cyrus of ignoring them in favour of chatting with Campbell.
As a teenager, my first husband was an Essex Man. It ended badly – all my fault – but I still retain a fondness for the breed, who I associate with self-made can-do stoicism and optimism; the opposite of, say, Islington Man. An Essex Man is being spoken of as the one to give the
It’s weird to think there was a time when I disliked J.K. Rowling; it seems as odd to me now as disliking words, or fun – she’s so obviously A Good Thing. (Never to be confused with a ghastly National Treasure – see Dawn French, the anti-Rowling.) Irony of ironies, I disliked this woman who
There’s not one thing I don’t love about the street in Hove where I live, with the sea at one end and the restaurant quarter at the other; if I had to fetishise a non-sentient thing, like those women who ‘marry’ rollercoasters, I’d be kinky for my street. (‘Avenue’, rather.) One of the lovely things
When I was in hospital for almost half a year, learning how to face life as a ‘Halfling’ – a person in a wheelchair, patronised and petted – the thing I looked forward to most was a normal, some would say banal, event. I longed to be in my local Pizza Express, in Hove, reading
The last week has been a rare cheery one for the Left; not only did Elon Musk and Donald Trump fall out and part ways with all the vim and venom of two teenage sweethearts, but Nigel Farage and Zia Yusuf also split briefly – at least until the Reform chairman had second thoughts and
Growing up, like a lot of English girls, I was what was known as a ‘dirty blonde’. (An evocative phrase, the Dirty Blondes are now variously a theatre troupe, a pop group and a restaurant.) In the summer, I would put lemon juice on my hair and watch in wonder as it bleached in the
When we consider child stars through the ages, the girls generally age better than the boys; Judy Garland, Elizabeth Taylor, Billie Piper all made the seamless switch from winsome cuties to gifted entertainers. The same cannot be said of Greta Thunberg, though she’s certainly remained consistently irritating. Neither a singer nor a thespian, she is
Is sympathy finite? The Rolling Stones suggested that we might extend this tenderest of emotions towards ‘Old Nick’ himself, but I’m not so sure. Can we really just keep feeling sorry for people infinitely, and expect it never to run out? How about empathy – that favourite buttonhole bloom of the slippery self-adoring? Are we required
