Julie Burchill

Julie Burchill

Julie Burchill is a writer living in Brighton.

Is this the end for the luxury believers?

I’m not the biggest Donald Trump fan, so I surprised myself by being pleased when he won the American election so conclusively. There was a serious reason for this. Though I’m thoroughly for abortion and against sex pests, it’s no good the Democrats pretending to be the party of women’s rights when they’re in favour

The Groucho Club died years ago

On hearing that the Groucho Club has been closed after the Metropolitan Police alleged ‘a recent serious criminal offence’, I felt a shiver of something I wasn’t quite sure of – one part sorrow, one part joy, shaken over ice-cold memories and served straight up. To some, the Groucho might have been some poncy private

Get police out of the playground

It’s not just that the lunatics – sorry, ‘neuro-diverse’ – have taken over the asylum. They’ve taken over the asylum and started walking on their hands, and they’re determined to make us do the same or feel ashamed for staying the right way up. That is what I thought, anyway, when I read that children

Is there any escape from Olivia Colman?

I still remember the day when, as an adult in my twenties, I was informed by a well-wisher that Aslan from The Lion, The Witch And The Wardrobe was really Jesus. As this was before my religious awakening, and I was quite the militant atheist at the time, I became rather irate at this revelation.

Hotels are good for the soul

I love hotels. Growing up, my family never stayed in them (we were poor but we were honest, M’Lud). Instead we went to Butlin’s, sharing a tiny ‘chalet’, or we stayed at bed and breakfasts; private lodgings where you got exactly those two things but had to be out and about during the daylight hours

I listened to a solid week of Woman’s Hour…

I was a weird kid, and though I harboured the usual innocent girlish ambitions of being a drug fiend and having sex with pop stars, I also nursed a desire to appear on Woman’s Hour. As a shy, provincial virgin, the programme opened up a world of women’s troubles from anorexia to zuigerphobia – and

The triumph of Mr and Mrs Badenoch

When we used to think of Tory marriages, we mostly thought of when they went horribly wrong – when the Honourable Member was caught with his trousers down, as when, in 1992, David Mellor was found ‘in flagrante’ with a resting ‘actress’ who saw fit to sell her story to a tabloid newspaper. The ghastly

An audacious and daredevil band: the Surfrajettes reviewed

For most people – once Brian Wilson had turned his back on the sea and started off down the lonely road to genius – surf music means either (or both) of two things: the Surfaris’ ‘Wipeout’ or Dick Dale’s ‘Misirlou’. Punchy, propulsive tunes, in other words, that make you feel like you’re on your way

The Women’s Equality party deserves its fate

Of all the grotesque modern types who cast a silly-yet-sinister shadow over the dog-days of Western civilisation – the Queers for Palestine, the Jew-baiting anti-racists, the humanity-hating eco-nuts – the Transmaid has a special step of shame very near the top. The Transmaid is a handmaid, like in Margaret Atwood’s novel, with two vital differences.

Where are the small boat babes?

Realising that I was one of only two non-Polish women while partying with the youngsters from my local Pizza Express – my home-from-home for a decade now – I had to laugh at myself. How I love my waitress mates; Marta, Polina and Camila have become almost like family, showing up self-funded and shoutily supportive at my

Obesity will soon be history

I’ve just seen a graph which surprised me only slightly less than one might which showed that the majority of people in the UK thought that Keir Starmer could be trusted to tell the truth about what he had for breakfast. It shows that US rates of obesity have started to fall. The reason, according

The hole in the heart of Phillip Schofield

I’ve always found the word ‘presenting’ – as in TV presenting – somewhat comical. It’s such a giveaway. In theory, the presenter is presenting the show they host; in reality, they’re presenting themselves for public approval. To add to the fun, ‘presenting’ is also a word used to describe monkeys being rude with their nether

University isn’t sexy anymore

Freshers’ Week. It sounds so appealing, even to an uneducated counter-jumper like me who finds the word ‘uni’ so repellent that it’s right up there with ‘gusset’ and ‘spasm’. At British universities it mostly means drinking a lot of alcohol – our historical reaction to most situations – which may contribute to outbreaks of what is

The truth about Jeremy Kyle

The inquest into the death of Steve Dymond, the unfortunate man who was found dead a week after his appearance on the Jeremy Kyle Show in 2019, gives one the odd feeling that society has changed a lot in a short time, while at the same time not having changed at all. The days are

When doctors have a dark side

We’re quite happy to think badly of most professions. The corrupt politician, the sleazy hack, the bent copper and the vain actor are all familiar entertainment tropes. But when it comes to those who keep us alive, we understandably don’t find the fact that they may be wrong ‘uns in the least entertaining. It’s the

Beware the celebrity booze merchants

There are quite a few ‘theories’ (what the middle classes call gossip nowadays) about why Jennifer Lopez and Ben Affleck have sundered their union for a second time. Personally, I’m of the entirely uninformed opinion that one of the contributing factors may have been that Jennifer Lopez – like many a celeb – has her

What happened to ‘lesbians’?

The elegant, serpentine word ‘lesbian’ had a place in the sun only briefly. In the first real novel about lesbianism, 1928’s The Well Of Loneliness, the protagonists are gloomily and somewhat puzzlingly called ‘inverts’, conjuring up an image of some sad Sapphic wondering why she was condemned to spend her life upside-down. Amazingly, Christopher Hawtree, writing