Julie Burchill

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 I received an email making me aware of the existence of ‘fit notes’ – ‘formerly known as sick notes’ – following ‘an appropriate online consultation with one of our GPs’. The consultation alone would cost me £14.95 and should I receive validation as an invalid, a ‘fit note’ would then be offered to me for £19.95, so that’s the best part of £35 quid in order to pull a sickie.

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 far preferred the complex women of the Old Testament – Deborah the judge, Yael the assassin, Ruth the first philo-Semite – to the repenting hookers and grieving mothers of the New. The book of Exodus revolves around the actions of five women; the Talmud teaches that ‘the Jewish people were redeemed from Egypt because of the merit of the righteous women of that generation’.

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 organised religion – something most of us got over at 15. Claiming to be a pagan is also a way of hinting that you’re having better sex than everybody else, whereas the reality is rather like that of those alleged ‘witches’ who oft appeared in the News of the World when I was a child. Middle-aged suburban swingers sporting pendulous breasts and maternal thighs, posing coyly inside a pentagram – and the women were just as bad.

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 in the last couple of years this once tall, handsome, athletic man was more or less a tumour on legs. But I recall the zest with which he greeted each day, and the pleasure he took in seeing the seasons change. Once I said to him, in a fit of drunken sentiment, ‘Dad, if it ever gets too much… you do have a lot of pills, don’t you?’ He looked at me, shocked, then called to my mum while winking at me, ‘Get in ‘ere quick, Bette – our daughter wants to kill me!

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 will have been made from scratch, her carefully curated tree decorations will tell myriad stories of a perfect home life, her tasteful National Trust Christmas cards will have been sent out on 1 December. To queen it over her acquaintances, enemies and admirers, rather – for Mary Sues have no friends. They’re far too awful. Do you know a Mary Sue – a self-adoring paragon of virtue who can only ever admit to faults which are actually boasts in disguise? Mary Sues are ‘perfectionists’ or ‘too passionate’ – but never, ever lazy or liars, envious or spiteful.

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 nun and the winner, charming Scouse builder Craig Phillips who took the prize of £70,000 and promptly gave it all to his friend Joanne Harris for a heart and lung transplant. That first season – shown on Channel 4, as were the next ten – seems so wholesome now; the weekly shopping challenges included making mugs using a potter's wheel, and learning semaphore, as though the housemates were overgrown guides and scouts excitedly vying for badges.

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 kitchens torn out and new ones installed – two of the three nearest flats to me have done this in the space of six months.  I don’t complain about the noise as I’ve been a very noisy neighbour in my time, but this architectural fetish has made me realise how out of step I am with the national psyche. For I would no sooner have a new kitchen installed than have a minaret erected atop of my building. My flat has its original tiny galley kitchen; like many of the swanky 1930s apartment buildings in Brighton & Hove, it once had a restaurant in the basement – Marine Gate along the seafront even had its own off-licence.

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 and space is precious; shoes and bags which would make us a healthy profit are swept aside for half-hearted etchings of mardy robins. But at least it’s in aid of charity, and thus in keeping with the spirit of the season – even if Christmas is still almost a third of a year away.

Undressing. Getting one’s kit off, whether for the lads or the ladies, depending on one’s bent. Disrobing, divesting, denuding. Slipping into something more comfortable. Giving one an eyeful. Getting ‘em off. Once we put away childish things and cease frolicking as nature intended, stripping off becomes a whole new ballgame. In our newly found state of youthful beauty, we may discover that flashing a bit of what one’s momma gave one can evoke a level of interest in others which one’s callow utterances cannot quite manage. If big-bodied nobodies are stripping off for strangers, how could we expect entertainers to keep their kit on? But equally, it’s important to know when one has reached an age – or a weight – when one should put it away. Cover it up.