Julie Burchill

I never dreamed I’d see the day when I agreed with Miriam González Durántez - such a snob that she believes people can be socially snubbed by being given Hellman’s mayonnaise, such a Euro-bore that she found Brexit ‘devastating’ and so short-sighted that she sees sex with Nick Clegg as a reasonable proposition. But with this recent Twitter rant, I quite warmed to her: ‘When you have a 2.30 hours delay in a British Airways flight (what is happening to this airline!?) open the inflight shop magazine and want to scream: STOP-CALLING-GIRLS-LITTLE-PRINCESSES!!

At the start of the year, a Facebook friend messaged me, telling me that she and a chum had been asked to leave their north London book group (how I hugged myself on reading those words!): she for posting a link on Facebook to a Spectator piece by me — pleasingly and rather reasonably headlined ‘The Brexit divide wasn’t between young and old but Ponces and Non-Ponces’; her friend for liking it. I was naturally fascinated, my curiosity driven by righteous indignation and unrighteous glee. I asked for more information and Judith — my penpal’s suitably heroic name —wrote back: ‘The last line from the email of the man who runs the book group was “I am therefore asking you to resign from the group.

Generally, I am the last person to advocate modesty, sobriety or duty. But then, I have been supporting myself financially, with no assistance from any other source - spouse or State or taxpayer - since I was seventeen years old, and am free to do as I please. The same, sadly, cannot be said of Prince William, who swerved this year’s Commonwealth Day service in favour of dad-dancing, Jägerbombing and high-fiving party-girls on a four-day jolly with his mates in Verbier. And this after spending a surprisingly modest thirteen days performing his official duties this year.  It’s no secret that I was one of the late Princess of Wales’ most rabid cheerleaders so naturally I was favourably inclined towards the poor bereaved Diana-faced boy.

We’re told not to judge books by their covers, but faced with these two it’s hard not to. Harman’s is one of those thick, expensive tomes which, understandably, politicians write when they’ve had enough earache and, unbelievably, publishers keep buying for vast sums, despite the fact that a fortnight after publication you can pick them up cheaper than an adult colouring book in a remainder bin. The old saw that ‘all political careers end in failure’ might now better be: ‘All political careers end with a book on Amazon going for less than the price of the postage.

Everyone in London seems to be fuming all the time — although, to be fair, fuming has become the default setting of our time. Historically, it’s the sexually repressed, swivel-eyed Daily Mail reader who fumes hardest, but ever since last June 23, when the glorious chaotic dawn of Brexit was revealed, liberals have been fuming up a storm with all the parasexual frustration of fat-fingered One Direction fans tweeting hatred about the paternity of Cheryl’s baby. Tempering, tantruming and thweatening to thwceam till they’re sick, it’s hard not to feel that what’s making them the most angry isn’t the alleged racism of Brexiteers or the alleged financial ruin waiting just around the corner.

More than 20 years ago, I left my fast life in London for a rather more relaxed one in Brighton and Hove. I never dreamt I could enjoy it more till all the business with the trains started up a few years back. The chaos at Southern Railway — which has seen commuters lose their livelihoods and property prices all along the London–Brighton line plunge, and culminated last summer in the resignation of the rail minister Claire Perry — has effectively put an end to the one thing I disliked about my seaside city. Namely, that it’s too close to That London. I never minded mates coming down to visit — all the better for showing off my beloved playground. The trouble came when they expected one to reciprocate.

I like to prance around showing off in hats and shouting at men as much as the next broad but - apart from the fact that I can get it at home - there were several reasons why I chose not to join a whole batch of my bitches on the Women’s March this weekend. Firstly, I was sure it would be full of 'Strong Women', a phrase I hate at the best of times - and feel should only be used if the lady in question can tear a telephone directory in half with her bare hands - and which seemed especially inappropriate to describe a bunch of overgrown Violet Elizabeth Botts having a collective temper tantrum because their side lost.

It’s easy to see TV talent shows as three-ring circuses of cheap emotion,  empty promises and bitter tears - but they have their bad points, too. While I can appreciate a dancing dog or knife-throwing nutter as much as the next man, surely only a sadist could contemplate the new Saturday evening smorgasbord of stultifying mediocrity - Let It Shine (BBC1) followed by The Voice (ITV) - with anything but sorrow. TV talent shows can be seen as a righteous reaction to the relentless tsunami of nepotism which now drenches the entertainment industry - traditionally one of the very few escape routes for sparky working-class kids too pretty for a life of crime.

Despite my 'difficult' reputation, I am a cheery cove in real life, all the more so as I get older. But in true Dorian Grey style, I only stay this way by letting my intolerant side rule the roost on Facebook. Every morning my hot little hands positively itch to unfollow, defriend and block: a day which passes without binning a few dim bulbs is a day wasted. I’ve had an especially good run of it this year, as two things in particular have acted as cracking prompts for my 'negging' narrative. One has been the showing of bad attitude on the part of many Remain-supporting mates. I don’t expect everyone to be a bold Brexiteer like me, but I do expect people to be good losers.

I was interested to read that police recorded more shoplifting offences in the year ending in March than they have since the introduction of the National Crime Recording Standard in 2003. The trend was unique among other diminishing types of hands-on thieving, single-handedly driving up the number of ‘property crimes’ reported in England and Wales, according to a study published by the Office for National Statistics. For a blissful moment, I was back in the heady days of Pop Sox and Labour landslides - the light-fingered calf-country of my 1970s provincial working-class girlhood - and as if surprised in adolescent self-abuse, I felt a blush creep up my ears and my heart skip a beat, as I recalled the splendid, sordid thrill of it all.

I’ve always been somewhat bemused by the concept of ‘hate crime’ - a phrase which first came into use in the US in the 1980s and into practice in the UK in 1998. I must say that the idea that it is somehow worse to beat up or kill someone because you object to their race or religion, than because you’re a nasty piece of work who felt like beating up or killing someone, strikes me as quite extraordinary - hateful, even, implying that some lives are worth more than others. Are we not all human, do we not all bleed? If we’re murdered, do not those who love us grieve for us equally? Why, then, are attacks on some thought to be worse than attacks on others?

My favourite quote of all time comes from John Stuart Mill: ‘War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things. The decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse. The person who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself.

The late Mrs Merton, bless her, would never have seen fit to ask Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt: ‘So, what first attracted you to each other?’ Perhaps the most beautiful film stars of their generation, they also possessed a devil-may-care air which combined with their charity work to make them seem both reckless and righteous - not an easy look to pull off. And then there was the Sex Angle. The bottom line about Classic Hollywood is that you knew the stars were having far better sex than you; what Lana and Gable and Ava got up to barely bore thinking about without benefit of a waterproof sheet. These days, though, it seems very unlikely indeed that Hollywood’s finest are having anywhere like as much, or as weird, sex as you, your friends and neighbours.

You know you’re getting old not when the policemen start looking young, but when a public figure dies and you say ‘O, I thought they were dead already!’ So it was for me when I heard that the Australian writer Richard Neville had died of dementia at the age of seventy four last week. Neville was never any sort of hero of mine - I was too busy promising my soul to Satan for a quick lick of Marc Bolan. But when I was thirteen and at the peak of my shoplifting prowess, I nicked his book Play Power on exactly the same robbing rampage that saw me take proud possession of The Female Eunuch, the half-mad masterpiece of Neville’s contrary contemporary Germaine Greer.