Julie Burchill is a writer living in Brighton. Her Substack is julieburchill.substack.com.
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‘Enhanced’– it’s such a slinky word. A ‘boob job’ sounds like a gimmick on a stick and a ‘breast augmentation’ implies cantilevers and mathematics – but a ‘breast enhancement’ sounds like something highly agreeable that everyone is going to benefit from. It’s with this bias towards the word that I consider ‘The Enhanced Games.’ Let’s
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‘Daft’ is such a wonderful word. Not for the first time, I’ve wished I was from Yorkshire, so that I could say it with its full gumption and contempt. It’s not used as much as it should be, and the reason may be that practically everybody’s daft right now – metaphorically picking their nose and
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The pundits are convinced that Peter Mandelson’s friendship with paedophile financier Jeffrey Epstein is the ‘biggest British political scandal since the Profumo affair’. The latest tranche of the Epstein files, released last week, revealed the extent of the pair’s sordid association. But what’s striking to me (and I could probably do the Profumo affair as
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Two years ago, I wrote an essay here called ‘In praise of Kemi Badenoch’. To say it was admiring is like saying that Abelard quite fancied Heloise. She sent me a nice message on X; I went mildly berserk one evening when drunk and sent her a poem I’d had ChatGPT write, basically saying that
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When I heard that King Charles had a film made about himself – a sometimes ‘elegiac’ film, to quote the BBC website – it seemed like such a very vulgar thing to do (and I speak as a highly vulgar person myself) that I thought it must be a joke. Imagine the late Queen doing
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When I heard that Robbie Williams had written a song called ‘Morrissey’, I didn’t know whether to be delighted or irate. It’s no secret that I idolise Moz, and the idea of a somewhat seedy showman attempting glory by association made my hackles rise somewhat. But on the other hand, Williams has co-written several songs
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You know when you’re a kid and your parents finally get on your wick so much that you think, ‘that’s it – I’m gonna run away’? At the age of 15, I actually got to London, selling scent in a chemist in King’s Cross Station for six weeks – but most children only get to the end
I’ve been fat and I’ve been thin; I’ve been pretty and I’ve been plain – ugly, even. Throughout this, my self-esteem has stayed generally constant, as if you’re going to base it on something as ephemeral as physical beauty, you’re going to run out of road very quickly indeed. This objective attitude to my own
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London is the focus of the world as since no time since the Swinging Sixties. Personally, I find it rather thrilling – but it doesn’t make me want to move back. With all the kerfuffles going on at assorted hotspots around the globe, you’d think Elon Musk and JD Vance wouldn’t have much time for
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My late mother was a kind woman – who I treated badly in adolescence, as teenage girls are often inclined to do – so the few times she said nasty things to me stick in my mind. In fact, I can only think of one: when I was 11, she told me that I had
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I’ve long loathed the idea of the ‘National Treasure’. Even typing the words made my eyes briefly cross with extreme crossness. You know the type, they are wheeled out every Christmas as we huddle around the television. Though they can be anything from actors to zoologists, they will have one loathsome character trait in common;
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The phrase ‘the silly led by the sinister’ was originally used by the late, singularly great Christopher Hitchens to describe the ‘Not In My Name’ anti-war coalition of the early 2000s. But in the spirit of the ‘if you’re going to steal, steal from the best’ quote generally attributed to Pablo Picasso, I’ve used it
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As both of the great Spectator writers Madeline Grant and Gareth Roberts have pointed out here recently, the element of farce in British politics is notable as never before. Miss Grant opined that ‘It is genuinely astonishing that Rachel Reeves isn’t accompanied by the Benny Hill theme at all time… a shambles, but then which
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Though Rebecca Culley is obviously a wrong ’un – having stolen £90,000 from her dear old gramps while pretending to care for him and only spend a minimum of his cash on ‘bits and bobs’ – I couldn’t help feeling a flash of admiration for her. When she was caught bang to rights, she diagnosed
The past few weeks has seen the pleasing spectacle of beautiful female film stars (Sydney Sweeney, Keira Knightley – even the previous Trump Derangement Syndrome sufferer Jennifer Lawrence, who once said that an orange victory would be “the end of the world”) refusing to toe the accepted Hollywood line on politics, be it by not kowtowing
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There’s not one damn thing I like about New York’s mayor Zohran Mamdani. I don’t like his politics, his religion, his flagrantly daft promises. And I absolutely hate the fact that – while not my type – he is, objectively, extremely good-looking. Aren’t there any politicians I like who look good? Is it just me,
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There was a time when, whenever the gossip mags wrote about Jennifer Aniston, they’d always preface her name with ‘Sad’. Sad Jen Aniston – it became one of those three-part names, like Sarah Jessica Parker or Sarah Michelle Gellar, only condescending rather than smug. For someone who was allegedly one of the most desirable women
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We’re woefully resigned to the strange situation whereby if an alien landed, they’d believe that being famous was hereditary, like being royal. But when I looked at the Wikipedia page of Louis Theroux, I almost fell out of my wheelchair chuckling. Not only is he the son of the ‘noted travel writer and novelist’ Paul
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I thought that maybe being in a wheelchair would stop my louche lunching ways, but somewhat to my own surprise (though not that of my mates, I’d wager), this isn’t the case. ‘You push – I’ll pay!’ has become my battle cry. But as I am wheeled about at this time of year, a pucker
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Reading about the break-up of the 19-year marriage of Nicole Kidman and Keith Urban, I was interested in some comments from our old mate ‘A. Source’ about the possible cause. According to the Sun: ‘Keith put a brave face on Nicole’s raunchy screen roles and all the comments she’d make about her sexuality. But he didn’t
