Julie Burchill

Julie Burchill

Julie Burchill is a writer living in Brighton.

Carrie, please don’t launch a lifestyle brand

When Carrie Symonds first emerged as the paramour of Prime Minister Johnson, I liked what I saw. I admired her bravery in waiving her anonymity to reveal that, as a teenager, she had been targeted by the serial rapist John Worboys to campaign against his release from prison. And I appreciated her love of our

Let’s give Meghan Markle the applause she deserves

The late actor Christopher Plummer once likened working with Julie Andrews on The Sound of Music to ‘being hit over the head with a big Valentine’s Day card’. Reading the latest bulletin from the Duchess of Sussex, the image returned unbidden; having to listen to the ceaseless stream of platitudes that this bad actress expels

The police are having an identity crisis

What are the police for? The answer used to be obvious – to solve crimes and catch criminals. But now, I’d seriously have to think about it; going on the evidence of recent years, I’d probably conclude that they’re being paid to have a laugh, signal virtue and, of course, dance. Plod’s attempts at ‘getting

Cultural appropriation has killed modern music

It’s a rule of life that adults shouldn’t understand young people’s music, ever since Little Richard made the old folk fume with his incessant and enigmatic cries of ‘A-wop-bop-a-loo-bop-a-lop-bam-boom!’ I bitterly recall when during my adolescence my father – a highly respectable Communist factory-hand who would rather have voted Tory than sworn in front of

How Rebekah Vardy went from underdog to ‘Cry-Bully’

It was Depp vs Heard and Best Of Breed at Crufts rolled into one: yes, the Wagatha Christie gravy-train came to a screeching halt yesterday having taken three years and £3 million in lawyers’ fees to reach the terminus. And with it, Rebekah Vardy’s reputation as a Cool Girl hit the buffers. I was vaguely

The toxic cult of the superhero

‘We don’t need another hero,’ sang Tina Turner back in the sexy-greedy 1980s. How times have changed. These days we have Superheroes Are Everywhere, a children’s book written by the Vice-President of the USA, Kamala Harris. Puffs tell us that ‘the book teaches that superheroes can be found everywhere in real life, from family members,

Is self-loathing the British disease?

Whatever one thinks of the government’s plans to send refugees to Rwanda, it was amusing to see this country’s left suddenly finding all sorts of reasons why only the UK – ‘a cake-filled, misery-laden, grey old island’ according to Emma Thompson, patron of the Refugee Council – would do as a final destination for these

Why does the police force attract so many sex abusers?

Growing up, I didn’t really think about the police until I got caught shoplifting at the age of 14. Separated from my comrades in the five-finger-discount crusade, I was stuck in a cell for half an hour but the earache only started when my furious parents came to collect me. I almost asked the kind

Where have all the Bad Girls gone?

Where have all the Bad Girls gone? They used to rock up regularly at the Love Island villa – now in its eighth and rather underwhelming season – only to find themselves on the EasyJet back to Blighty after having full sex on prime time TV. (One of them, Zara Holland, being stripped of her

Glastonbury sums up everything there is to hate about rock music

‘Glasto’ – the diminutive makes me shiver with distaste; like ‘Peely’ – as his fans affectionately called the late DJ John Peel, schoolgirl-admirer and all-round creep – it sums up everything I don’t like about rock music. I’m reminded of my years as a teenage reporter at the New Musical Express, coming home from some

What Emma Thompson needs to understand about celebrity nudity

Another day, another diva disrobes. If it’s not Madonna (63) being ‘outraged’ after being banned from Instagram Live (after continually breaking the app’s rules with her nude posts) for ‘digital depictions of her vagina’ it’s Emma Thompson (also 63) getting her kit off for her new film, in which she plays a widow who hires

Kim Kardashian is a better role model than Marilyn Monroe

When Kim Kardashian wore Marilyn Monroe’s dress to the Met Gala recently – the shimmering, crystal-studded, second-skin gown in which MM sang her infamous rendition of ‘Happy Birthday, Mr President’ to JFK in 1962 – many people had a collective fit of the vapours. You’d have thought someone had wiped their nose – or worse

The punk paradox of monarchism

It seems incredible that, 45 years ago, a pop group – the Sex Pistols – could release a record on a respectable label (A&M, founded by Herb Alpert, home of the Carpenters) in which they claimed, probably somewhat rashly, that our glorious monarch was not a human being. These days such sentiments are confined to

The witch trial of Amber Heard

For the first few weeks of watching Johnny Depp and Amber Heard attempt to turn each other into twelve cans of cat food, it felt like some silly if savage sideshow. But as the defamation trial dragged on, it became obvious there was something unusually grotesque about this case; as with a boxing match, turning the

Is Harry Styles really the new David Bowie?

There’s something ludicrous about old people trying to understand the pop music preferred by youth. Mind you, youth is relative and here I am at the age of 62, explaining Harry Styles. Styles isn’t just a pop star, he’s a phenomenon and therefore worthy of examination by ancient people like me. Last week, Radio 4’s

The cult of sensitivity

I was extra pleased to have swerved the modern curse that is Wordle when I read that ‘sensitive’ words have been removed from it. A spokesman proclaimed: ‘In an effort to make the puzzle more accessible, we are reviewing the solutions and removing obscure or potentially insensitive words over time. HARRY is an example of

How the word ‘woman’ became taboo

When I was a little girl, my mum told me that I shouldn’t use the word ‘woman’ – but rather ‘lady.’ ‘Woman’ was just too visceral to her, whereas a ‘lady’ might well be a doll. But by adolescence my shoplifted copy of The Female Eunuch and Helen Reddy bawling ‘I am strong, I am

In praise of Katie Price

A friend told me awhile ago that whenever they saw my name they’d think ‘Oh no – what has she done to upset people now!’ I was mildly miffed at the time but, as a long-standing defender of Katie Price – the criminal formerly known as Jordan – this is invariably my reaction these days on

Julie Burchill

The ceaseless self-pity of cyclists

I know that all must have prizes in the Victimisation Olympics these days, but when I heard a bicycle-rider on Radio 5 Live this week complaining about being ‘dehumanised’ and ‘othered’, I really knew we’d reached peak woo-woo with the ceaseless self-pity of cyclists. ‘What’s the magic word?’ our mums used to ask us. Today