Julie Burchill

Call him a tech bro’, a hustler or even – hiss! – a Starmerite. But my word, I’m keen on my MP – and recently promoted business secretary – Peter Kyle, the Honourable Member for Hove and Portslade. That doesn’t mean I voted for him last time; I wasn’t going to assist Robbie the Robot into power. I voted Reform, being acquainted with the candidate Martin Hess and finding him both clever and good company. I did vote for Kyle the first time, and became acquainted slightly with him, too; as they say of the 1960s, if you can remember the Peter Kyle Election Victory Night Party of 2015, you weren’t there. All I remember is screaming and shouting and singing and celebrating with what seemed like every gay man in Brighton and Hove. It was a riot!

It’s strange to think that the British people were once addressed as adults by those who governed them. In theory, this shouldn’t have been the case; in previous times, there was more social rigidity and more class deference. But everyone from weather forecasters to prime ministers somehow resisted the temptation, until relatively recently, to speak to us as if we were wayward school kids – or ‘half devil and half child’ as Rudyard Kipling had it in The White Man’s Burden. If Winston Churchill was giving one of his wartime broadcasts today, he’d have to end it: ‘And wrap up warm/Take a brolly/Stay hydrated!’ When did this ruling-class obsession with the national flags being so toxic that they can only be brought out for sporting events take hold?

Seeing those photographs of Angela Rayner on Hove beach in broad daylight drinking a vast glass of rosé (‘day wine’ as my lot call it) I felt a rare flash of FOMO. I met a lot of politicians when I worked as a political columnist for the Mail on Sunday in my twenties, and I’ve rarely craved their company since. But seeing Rayner on my doorstep (doing one of the things I used to most love doing before I became an invalid – boozing on Hove beach in broad daylight) I felt a pang of loss. But then, we’d have only been half a glass down before we’d have started screeching at each other like a pair of soused-up fishwives.

On reading that Dean Cain (the actor who played the television Superman) had become an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent, I felt a thrill of insurrection – so hot on the heels of the revelation that naughty Sydney Sweeney is a registered Republican! I imagined Rosie O’Donnell crying into her morning decaf, Lizzo swearing at her gender-fluid cat, Ellen DeGeneres taking it out on the help from sheer liberal frustration. Because celebrities aren’t allowed to be right-wing (‘right-wing’ now being dunce-speak for anyone against limitless illegal immigration and transvestite men colonising women’s spaces.

I’ve been musing recently how people in the public eye can go ‘downhill’ in two main ways. One can make big, brash, ‘bad’ decisions, ignore well-meaning advice and render oneself an outlaw well into old age, unacceptable in polite company and rejected by one’s more pusillanimous peers. I’ve seen totem poles less wooden than Emma Watson and Daniel Radcliffe There’s a kind of tattered glory in this, knowing that you didn’t toe the line (you were too busy snorting them) because you had talent to burn. Even if you do eventually find yourself on the ropes, you’ll always have the satisfaction of knowing that you inspired a whole bunch of youngsters and were remembered by a whole bunch of oldsters – something which line-toers are highly unlikely to do.

As Wimbledon reaches its climax this weekend, those of us neither interested in tennis, nor in taking a fortnight off work for solid perving purposes, are delighted it will soon be over. I couldn't care less about the tennis, but the comings and goings in the slightly obscene-sounding ‘Royal Box’ are impossible to escape from. The comings and goings in the slightly obscene-sounding ‘Royal Box’ are impossible to escape from This year has provided a bumper bonanza: Rebel Wilson, Cate Blanchett, Celia Imrie, Rory Kinnear, Nick Jonas, Bear Grylls, Hugh Grant, Olivia Rodrigo, Priyanka Chopra, Gary Lineker, John Cena, Dave Grohl, Dominic Cooper, Judd Apatow, Leslie Mann, Russell Crowe, David Beckham, Eddie Redmayne, Ronan Keating and Tom Daley have all shown up.

As a teenager, my first husband was an Essex Man. It ended badly – all my fault – but I still retain a fondness for the breed, who I associate with self-made can-do stoicism and optimism; the opposite of, say, Islington Man. An Essex Man is being spoken of as the one to give the ghastly ‘Sir’ Sadiq Khan a run for his money In recent decades, the county has become known as a glitzy, new-money Cheshire-on-Colne, due to the popular television show The Only Way Is Essex, a ‘scripted reality’ show in which a mutating cast of likely lads and luscious-lipped ladies make out and break up at bars and barbecues.