Julie Burchill

Vorlage:Infobox Writer Julie Burchill (born July 3 1959 in Frenchay, Bristol) is a British journalist known for the acerbity of her writing and the vehemence and unpredictability of her opinions.

Life

Julie Burchill was born in Bristol to working class parents, a fact of which she is very proud. She did not attend university. She started her career as a writer at the New Musical Express (NME) in her teens after responding, with her husband-to-be Tony Parsons, to an advert in that paper seeking hip young gunslingers to write about the then emerging punk movement. Burchill was briefly married to Parsons and then to Cosmo Landesman, the son of Fran and Jay Landesman. Both marriages produced a son. Both sons live with their fathers. In 1991, Burchill, Landesman and Toby Young established a short-lived magazine Modern Review through which she met Charlotte Raven, with whom she had a much publicised affair. She subsequently married again, to Raven's brother Daniel, a much younger man. She wrote of the joys of having a "toyboy" in her Times Weekend Review column. Fellow NME journalist/author Paul Wellings wrote about their friendship in his book "I'm A Journalist...Get Me Out Of Here".

In 2003, Burchill was ranked number 85 in Channel 4's poll of 100 Worst Britons. The poll was inspired by the BBC series 100 Greatest Britons, though it was less serious in nature. The aim was to discover the "100 worst Britons we love to hate". The poll specified that the nominees had to be British, alive and not currently in prison or pending trial.

Having previously converted to Christianity, she announced in February 2006 plans for a year's sabbatical from journalism, during which she plans, among other things, to study theology. The Times has recently dropped her Saturday column, and had arranged a more flexible arrangement where Burchill writes for the daily paper (see[1]).

As well as continuing with her studies, she is working on three books and two documentaries, and has contributed an introduction to the novel A Year in the Life of TheManWhoFellAsleep by Greg Stekelman.

She has lived in Brighton for a number of years and a book on her adopted home town is forthcoming.

Burchill has also on occasions expressed concern for animal welfare. She is a supporter of the Safe Haven for Donkeys in the Holy Land.

Career

Julie Burchill has written for many newspapers and magazines. At one time she wrote a column for the Mail on Sunday - perhaps a surprising home for her talents. For five years until 2003 she wrote a weekly column in The Guardian. As Lynn Barber wrote in The Observer, "She moved at the beginning of this year because when she asked for a rise, the Guardian offered her a sofa. 'They said, "We can't give you no more money" - lying bastards - "but we'll buy you the biggest bestest sofa you've ever seen." And I said, "Well, I'll think about it." And I put down the phone and I thought, "That was an insult!" Because it was saying: You are a white working-class woman who may have come up in the world but basically you're sitting on your fat ass all day, eating chocs and watching Trisha. Which I do - but they don't have the right to say it.' So she moved to the Times, who paid her in dosh rather than sofas." She also claims she left the Guardian in "protest at what [she] saw as its vile anti-Semitism." (Burchill is fiercely pro-Israel and hostile to Islam).

She currently writes for The Times. Shortly after starting her weekly column, she referred to George Galloway but appeared to confuse him with former MP Ron Brown, reporting the misdeeds of Brown as those of Galloway. Galloway threatened legal action which was averted when she apologised and The Times paid damages.

Burchill is noted for her confrontational and iconoclastic views, which have been criticised as contradictory. In the 1980s, she wrote in favour of Margaret Thatcher, but she has always claimed she has never renounced the Communist beliefs of her youth. She is a consistent defender of the old Soviet Union. Burchill champions the working-class against the middle-class in most cases, and has been particularly vocal in defending the much-maligned chavs.

Burchill's departure from the Guardian was caused principally by the tone of her opinion pieces in relation to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Though Burchill later acknowledged this as the cause of her departure, she variously claimed at the time that it came down to differences between her claimed working class origins and the middle class stance of the Guardian, or in relation to a request for a pay rise. Although Burchill's views appeared to find some focus in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, they were evidently part of a wider, more open and often fierce animosity that she had developed towards Muslims in general in the years preceding her departure from the paper. Burchill's arguments in this regard were characterised by their frequently incoherent and poorly developed nature - a principal cause of the controversy, rather than the opinions themselves. A number of wide-ranging, disparate topics such as the war in Iraq, the invasion of Afghanistan and the wearing of the hijab were seemingly confused, with Burchill's opinion pieces in her column on these matters often appearing suddenly and without context, and commonly juxtaposed by starkly lighter subjects such as reality TV or any domestic matters that had been troubling the author during the week.

Burchill has made frequent attacks on various celebrity figures, which have been criticised for their cruelty, though her supporters note the self-deprecating aspects of her writing. She is perhaps best known in America for the "Fax wars" or "Battle of the Bitches" with author Camille Paglia ([2]). She has written many books (her novel Ambition was a bestseller in the 1980s), and has made television documentaries about the death of her father from asbestosis and about Heat magazine.

Her 2004 lesbian-themed novel for teenagers Sugar Rush was produced by Shine Limited and aired on Channel Four. [3]

Bibliography

• The Boy Looked at Johnny co-written with Tony Parsons, 1977
• Love It or Shove It, 1985
• Girls on Film, 1986
• Damaged Gods: Cults and Heroes Reappraised, 1987
• Ambition, 1989
• Sex and Sensibility, 1992
• No Exit, 1993
• Married Alive, 1998
• I Knew I Was Right, 1998, an autobiography
• Diana, 1999
• The Guardian Columns 1998-2000, 2000
• On Beckham, 2002
• Sugar Rush, 2004 (adapted for UK television in 2005)

External links

Wikiquote: Julie Burchill – Zitate

• Photo
• Unofficial Julie Burchill website
• Guardian columns by Julie Burchill
• Hurricane Julie 2005 Spike Magazine extensive interview with Julie Burchill
• Details of Sugar Rush on Channel Four
• The Julie Burchill Random Recycler