Julie Burchill - Views and Reputation

Views and Reputation

Burchill is known for her contentious prose – in her own words, "the writing equivalent of screaming and throwing things" – and strong opinions: for her novel Sugar Rush her publicist described her "Britain's most famous and controversial journalist". One of her most consistent themes is her championing of the working-class (which she still identifies with, despite now being a successful journalist) against the middle-class in most cases, and has been particularly vocal in defending chavs. According to Will Self, "Burchill's great talent as a journalist is to beautifully articulate the inarticulate sentiments and prejudices of her readers". For Michael Bywater, Burchill's "insights were, and remain, negligible, on the level of a toddler having a tantrum". As John Arlidge put it in The Observer,

If Burchill is famous for anything it is for being Julie Burchill, the brilliant, unpredictable, outrageously outspoken writer who has an iconoclastic, usually offensive, view on everything.

Burchill has frequently drawn on her personal life for her writing, but conversely her personal life has been a subject of public comment, particularly during the late eighties and early nineties, when she was the self-declared "Queen of the Groucho Club", and "everything about her – her marriages, her debauchery, her children – seemed to be news." In 1999 the Daily Mail ran a two-page spread with the headline "Is Julie Burchill the worst mother in Britain?", "savaging her for leaving her two sons to be raised by their fathers." In 2002 her life was the subject of a one-woman West End play, Julie Burchill is Away, by Tim Fountain, with Burchill played by her friend Jackie Clune.

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.

Burchill has made frequent attacks on various celebrity figures, which have attracted criticism for their cruelty, though her supporters note the self-deprecating aspects of her persona. Asked by Will Self in a 1999 interview if she was solipsistic, she responded with the comment: "I don't know – I didn't go to university". On the 25th anniversary of John Lennon's murder by shooting in 2005 she told the Guardian "I don't remember where I was but I was really pleased he was dead, as he was a wife-beater, gay-basher, anti-Semite and all-round bully-boy."

Burchill was an early critic of the fashion for denigrating lower social classes as "chavs". In 2005, she presented the Sky One documentary In Defence Of Chavs. "Picking on people worse off than you are isn't humour. It's pathetic, it's cowardly and it's bullying" she commented in an interview for The Telegraph at the time. "It's all to do with self-loathing ... The middle classes can't bear to see people having more fun, so they attack Chavs for things like their cheap jewellery. It's jealousy, because they secretly know Chavs are better than them. They're even better looking."

A defender of Israel, The Jewish Chronicle described her in 2008 as "Israel's staunchest supporter in the UK media"; she has two Israeli flags in her home, declaring in 2005, after Ariel Sharon's withdrawal of Israeli settlers from the Gaza Strip, that "Israel is the only country I would fucking die for. He's the enemy of the Jews. Chucking his own people off the Gaza; to me that's disgusting."

She is among those British journalists who wholeheartedly supported Operation Iraqi Freedom. Writing in The Guardian in 2003, she said: “I am in favour of a smaller war now rather than a far worse war later” and she condemned “the sheer befuddled babyishness of the pro-Saddam apologists”. She admitted the war was partly about oil but explained: “The fact is that this war is about freedom, justice – and oil. It's called multitasking. Get used to it!” She also claimed that because Britain and the United States sold the Iraqi dictator weapons, “it is our responsibility to redress our greed and ignorance by doing the lion's share in getting rid of him”. She also expressed her admiration for United States Republican politician Condoleezza Rice, whom she described as “the coolest, cleverest, most powerful black woman since Cleopatra”.

Commenting on the 2011 Egypt protests, Burchill wrote in the The Independent: "It would be wonderful to think that what replaces Mubarak will be better. But here's the thing about Middle Eastern regimes: they're all vile. The ones that are 'friendly' are vile and the ones that hate us are vile. Revolutions in the region have a habit of going horribly wrong, and this may well have something to do with the fact that Islam and democracy appear to find it difficult to co-exist for long".