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Julie BurchillNew Statesman |
We’re familiar by now with the peculiar paradox of left-wingers and feminists, those weird well-born women who would scream blue murder if a white...
Boyish girls, climb the nearest tree and give a Tarzan whoop of victory – girly boys, fashion a floral crown and caper copiously. Thanks to the Cass...
What do we talk about when we talk about Marilyn Monroe? Sex, death and everything in between. Unlike other legendary film stars from Garbo to...
The old should envy the young; it’s part of the nature order of things. When I was young, I was gloriously aware that old people (anyone over 30)...
The Sunday Times headline for the obituary of Edward Bond earlier this month was striking: ‘Briton who rose from a working class background to make...
With Owen Jones very huffily leaving the Labour party, I was moved to examine the state of The Flounce in public life de nos jours. The...
I’ve always had a soft spot for bin men – or refuse collectors as we generally call them these days. It used to be dustmen, as I remember from the...
Few things sum up the chasm between childhood and adolescence more poignantly than our changing relationship with music. One minute life is all...
‘PUNK’S NOT DEAD!’ I will sometimes write as a sign-off on emails to mates when I’ve said something particularly ‘bad’. It’s something...
‘The Incident’ which took place between Chris Rock and Will Smith at the 2022 Oscars was a double-edged sword. It brought a bored audience back;...
Watching the current scandal around Christian Horner play out, I didn’t feel any of the glee I usually do when tabloids dissect the private lives of...
It’s generally my morning habit to leap out of bed at 5am singing the Queen song ‘Don’t Stop Me Now’, but on those rare mornings when I sleep...
As someone who was fond of Derek Draper (a feeling that probably wasn’t mutual, as I nicked his bird) it was strange to see photographs of his...
Though I believe that people who use the phase ‘retail therapy’ should probably have their voting rights removed, I do like shops – the lights...
When I was a child, learning about the Holocaust, I used to believe that what happened to the Jews in Germany could never happen here. My reasons for...
Awhile back, I followed the career of the writer Elizabeth Day, but not in a good way; rather, I followed it much as a fly must have followed a...
Might the King’s cancer diagnosis lead the Royals to put aside the squabbles that have torn the family apart and come together, having seen the...
Whenever international affairs are proving particularly ‘interesting’ there’s always some clown who pipes up with ‘Oh, if only women ruled the...
Was I the only person who felt a flash of disappointment when a source said of the imminent Girls Aloud re-union that ‘No one wants it to be a...
Like most clever people, I’m not over-fussed about clothing; there have been numerous studies showing that successful types – unless they’re in...
I surely wasn’t the only citizen of Brighton and Hove who breathed a sigh of relief when the Green council was turfed out by Labour last May after...
We’re all wise to those phoney rotters who hold ‘luxury beliefs’ – the excellent phrase coined by the social commentator Rob Henderson in 2019...
Due to my rather efficacious dabbling in semaglutides last summer, I’m currently on the mailing list of several online pharmacies, and the other day...
Growing up in 1970s working-class Bristol (before it went all poke: posh and woke) life was so tribal that you could get beaten up at school as a...
Does anybody actually watch televised Hollywood award shows anymore unless, like me, they’re being paid to? Until ‘The Incident’ at the 2022...
For inadequate men scared by self-willed women, by the start of the 21st century, things were getting dangerously out of hand. The...
I’ve always admired Israeli women. Though I didn’t see any in the flesh before my first trip to the Promised Land 20 years ago, at Sunday School I...
I’ve never been keen on pagans. They strike me as attention seekers with no actual merits to boast of except saying that they don’t believe in...
It can’t be any fun to have lung cancer as Dame Esther Rantzen does; I watched my father die from mesothelioma over the best part of a decade, and...
Shane MacGowan’s death and his star-studded funeral captured the headlines this week. But the fawning and fanfare felt oddly dissonant to me: was I...
Christmas means different things to different people; for Mary Sue, it will be yet another excuse to queen it over her friends. Her Christmas pudding...
Here they come, see them run, twinkling away like a bunch of irritatingly flashing fairy lights, the milk of human kindness curdling on their breath...
‘If there’s one thing Eddie Izzard can’t be faulted on, it’s enthusiasm,’ Steerpike opined this week on the news that the comedian and...
I don’t remember exactly when I first read about the ancient courtier role of Groom of the Stool, but it’s a fascinating business. Here’s...
I am working on a play about Marilyn Monroe at the moment and, reading Britney Spears’s book, the similarities of these two fragile blondes came to...
Who’s the worst pop star of modern times? Some might say that Adele sounds like a moose with PMT – and Sam Smith certainly has his knockers. But...
I’ve always been a Big Brother fan; I was hooked from the very first series way back in the year 2000, which featured Nasty Nick, Anna the lesbian...
I’ve always been partial to buskers. I’m sympathetic to beggars of most kinds – except the aggressive rotters, of which there are relatively few...
I like the Art Deco apartment block where I live; the building is beautiful and the neighbours are nice. Just one thing; they keep having their old...
I’ve never been sorry that I left education at 17, armed with nothing but my raw talent and splendid rack. The conformity and unworldliness which...
Each year in the charity shop where I volunteer, the Christmas cards arrive in August; by September, they must be on the shelves. We’re a small shop...
Undressing. Getting one’s kit off, whether for the lads or the ladies, depending on one’s bent. Disrobing, divesting, denuding. Slipping into...
The death of the gangster Dave Courtney – found in his bed with a gunshot wound at the age of 64 – has once more brought to the fore the odd...
The surest way to work up a crusade in favour of some good cause is to promise people they will have a chance of maltreating someone. To be able to...
Is nomenclature destiny? If Keir Starmer had not been named for Keir Hardie, the founding father of the Labour party, but rather had his middle name...
The word ‘actress’ used to be interchangeable with ‘prostitute’ and though it’s a good thing that this little misunderstanding was cleared...
An online ding-dong is like a full complement of condiments at lunch; you wouldn’t want to live off it, but it certainly adds spice. I haven’t had...
Before the accusations of being a Bad Feminist start, can I say that I am inclined to believe the women who claim to have been sexually assaulted and...
In case you were under the apprehension that ‘Karen’ is simply an attractive name popularly given to girl babies in the early 1960s (my best...
I was a teenage shoplifter. I had a good run at it, from 12 to 14, and found it as addictive as any drug: the anticipation, the antsiness, the sharp...