Julie Burchill - The Guardian columns

She rocks! If she were an AC/DC album, she'd be Back in Black.

She's fabulous, I love her.

and speaking of columnists - I just read john o farrells "global village idiot" last week whilst on hols. I bought it cos it was bite sized chapters, and it made me guffaw several times.

Hmm. In my experience, Julie Burchill's great if you agree with whatever particular cause she's flagging up at the time. If you're not one for cause and anti-causes though, it's pretty tedious.

I shagged her once!

dont agree... i often dont agree with her, but i still love her biting wit and incredible ease... havent we argued this before tho?

Even I like her columns.

I found this interesting head to head.

Bloody hell! What a lot of bollocks they both spout.

camilles fake dismissive academic sneers are both boring and vain i thought...

Definitely. All rhetorical, all immature, all *so* American.

You can read some of her coloumns here from the Guardian. Interesting one about Sinatra, of the couple i've read so far, it would have been more interesting if he were still alive when she wrote it.

Camille only became famous in America because she is a female who lashed out at the feminists at a time when they needed a good lashing. When she first came to national attention, no one was questioning or challenging the feminist ideologs. That's what brought her to prominence, not her erudition, which has always been suspect. In that regard she serves roughly the same social purpose as Michael Moore. They are both knowledge-industry wind-up merchants. And I really don't think Americans have a monopoly on immaturity and rhetoric. In fact most of us are at best pale immitations of our British masters in that regard. Rule Britannia, dude.

I wasn't saying the immaturity and rhetoric was 'so American', Justyn - it was the no-holds-barred style! And I say it because it brought back memories of the Al Stewart Mailing List, where they argued like that all the time. Rather than sticking to insult-flinging, like Missi and co., there's always some attempt to psycho-analyse the opposition and prove that their argument is down to a fatal flaw in their character. I suppose you could accuse me of this, to some extent, but *that's* where I get it from. Whenever they got angry at me, they called me 'Boy', and promised I would learn to agree with them as I got older. Needless to say, no progress yet. As for Julie, she irritates me when she goes out of her way to prove everything anyone happens to like is actually vile - key moment being when she rounded up almost every sixties rock n' roll icon she could think of, and denounced them completely for whatever offences they might have committed (ie. David Bowie was interested in Nazi fashion at some point - ergo, he's just a Nazi. John Lennon recorded the crap 'Imagine' - ergo, he was just a naive Marxist.) I like her when she's being rude, morose, cutting etc. - but not when she gets morally bombastic in the manner of a stuffy-huffy Lord.

I don't think Burchill reckons that Lennon's a naive Marxist, I think she reckons he was cynical bourgeois egomanic, amongst other things. Anyway, the point about Burchill, for me, is that she makes you look at things from another point of view. Sometimes I think she's right, sometimes I think she's being ridiculous but she always presents a challenge to received wisdom.

Yeah, I think you're right David. Ultimately she's a good writer because she makes you think about things in unusual ways. Regardless of whether you agree with her, she makes the reader jump through certain mental hoops that they might not otherwise. And she writes well...

I fancy Julie Burchill.

she's a tough opinionated cookie and I admire her for speaking her mind but she's a complete contradiction in person - her voice is soooo little girlie - it totally through me when I heard her - I know that says more about me than her but it made me think that constructing someone in your head from the written word is so convincing but so fallible.

Julie Burchill is Englands greatest living English woman and she s back writing for The Times tomorrow........