Julie Burchill

For the past few years, another seasonal story has joined the traditional tales of woe about this mysterious, random thing called Winter causing chaos - always at the same time of year, it seems - on the railways of this fair land and of roadworks unexpectedly coinciding with the peak time for people taking long car journeys to visit loved ones (and even their families) thereby adding misery to the mistletoe on motorways across the country. This new glitch concerns a nation of Tiny Tims and Tiny Tears going without the Christmas gifts intended for them simply because the theoretical givers ordered them online rather than go to the bother of fetching them on their own two feet.

‘What would happen if one woman told the truth about her life? The world would split open,’ wrote the American poet and activist Muriel Rukeyser in 1968. It took just short of half a century, but 2017 was the year in which #MeToo made this prophecy a reality. The phrase was coined in 2006 by the black American activist Tarana Burke, who was inspired to use it after finding herself without words when a 13-year-old girl confided in her that she had been sexually assaulted, later wishing she had just said ‘Me too’.

Of all the interesting combinations which sexual geopolitics has come up with, that of the American girl and the English man is one of the most enduring, giving a saucy spin to the phrase ‘Special Relationship.’ It started with cold hard economics when the second half of the 19th century saw the creation of the American billionaire - Vanderbilt and his railways, Carnegie and his steel, Singer and his sewing machines. The daughters of such men became known as The Dollar Princesses; girls who came to cold old England bringing million-dollar dowries to reboot ruined stately homes in exchange for the one thing money couldn’t buy them in the brave New World - a title.

It has long been my belief that whereas the quality of gentiles drawn to Judaism is very high (Marilyn Monroe, Elizabeth Taylor, myself), the dregs are drawn to Islam. And leaving aside the dozy broads who gravitate to it for kinky reasons after watching one too many Turkish Delight ads (Vanessa Redgrave, Lauren Booth), there is something about this religion which attracts the very weakest of Western men. We think of those often half-witted types who learn to build a bomb online. Then there are the imam-huggers of the left who never met a wife-beating mad mullah they didn’t like. A lot of the reason left-wing men seem to have so much time for Islamism is to do with suppressed feelings of resentment towards the march of feminism, which they could never in a million years admit to.

It has long been my belief that whereas the quality of gentiles drawn to Judaism is very high (Marilyn Monroe, Elizabeth Taylor, myself), the dregs are drawn to Islam. And leaving aside the dozy broads who gravitate to it for kinky reasons after watching one too many Turkish Delight ads (Vanessa Redgrave, Lauren Booth), there is something about this religion which attracts the very weakest of Western men. We think of those often half-witted types who learn to build a bomb online. Then there are the imam-huggers of the left who never met a wife-beating mad mullah they didn’t like. A lot of the reason left-wing men seem to have so much time for Islamism is to do with suppressed feelings of resentment towards the march of feminism, which they could never in a million years admit to.

My sainted mum was of untarnished working-class blood — she worked, variously, as a cleaner, factory hand and shop assistant — and like most women of her kind who grew up before the 1960s, she never swore. Not a ‘bitch’, ‘slut’ or ‘slag’ ever passed her lips, though she certainly loathed a lot of women and always had at least two feuds on the go. In her eyes, using words like that would have made her just as bad as the targets of her disapproval. No, her ultimate diss for females she disliked was ‘Lady Muck’.

I am not a bad friend. I enjoy my mates, and I am generous, showering them with fun, money and sympathy. But I do not crave their company when I am without it, for whatever length of time, and should we lose touch, I do not miss them. In fact, I find there’s a profound pleasure in parting with a chum, whether by their hand or by yours. We should all have the courage to admit it when a friendship has become more work than play, more duty than beauty. Maybe my origins led me to feel this way. I was an only child who, at an early age, became extremely fond of my own company. Some of my earliest memories are of lurking in my bedroom and begging my mother to get rid of young schoolmates who had come calling for me to play.

As a tot growing up in a provincial proletarian Communist household in the 1960s, I’d been led to believe that socialism was colour-blind. But when I moved to That London in the 1970s, I quickly became aware that the non-working-class Left operated what was best described as Paint-Chart Politics – the further from white, the more likely you were to be right. This began in a small way, with reggae bands who believed stuff about women that would have had them condemned as fascist Neanderthals had they been white playing under the Rock Against Racism flag; in recent years, it has seen the Left support similar Islamist stone-agers just because they're the right (Left) side of beige.

Twenty years in August since Diana died. The anniversary is sad for me on many levels — she was definitely the final famous person I’ll have a pash on, and it reminds me that I haven’t yet earned back the whopping advance I was given for my book about her. To be fair, the book was an absolute stinker, written through a haze of gin, tears and avarice, containing such clodhopping clangers as ‘with blue skies in her eyes and the future in her smile’ and ‘affection swooshed out of her like a firework from a bottle’. Nurse, the screens! But there was good stuff in it, too. Namely, the way I served it to the Prince’s Party who continue to curdle Diana’s memory much as they tried to ruin her reputation during her lifetime.

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.