Quotes from Julie Burchill

Lots of women love to accuse men of being immature when the fellow in question displays a reluctance to 'commit.'

What sort of sap doesn't know by now that picture-perfect beauty is all done with smoke and mirrors anyway?

There's something brave and touching about game girls of all ages keeping themselves smart in hard times - one thinks of those wonderful women during World War II drawing stocking seams in eyebrow pencil up the back of legs stained with gravy browning because nylons were so hard to get hold of.

These women whose antics we smirk at good-naturedly in the pap-traps put themselves out there at least partly on their beauty they are in showbiz, and showing what they've got is part of their business as much as it is for male show-ponies from the Chippendales to George Clooney.

Can I just say here how much I hate the word 'pamper'? While pretending to celebrate and indulge women, it actually implies that their bodies are so revolting that even their 'me time' must be dedicated to turning them into living dolls if potential suitors are to be prevented from running screaming in horror.

Fact is, famous people say fame stinks because they love it so - like a secret restaurant or holiday island they don't want the hoi polloi to get their grubby paws on.

The Feminist Me says that a woman's right to her own body should be inviolate at all times, free from fear of peeping paps.

Shame, like beauty, is often in the eye of the beholder.

From paying off friends' tax bills to rescuing stray dogs and stuffing &pound20 notes into the hands of homeless people, I can't get rid of my money fast enough.

When I moved out of London 13 years ago, I found a whole other reason not to drive. This was because my new husband Dan, unlike my dad, did drive, and this became a great source of fun and adventure.

It may be a cliche, but it's true - the build-up to Christmas is so much more pleasurable than the actual day itself.

Big women do themselves a disservice when they attempt to become the Righteous Fat (the Righteous Thin are bad enough, all that running around and sweating, somehow believing it means anything).

Surely being a Professional Beauty - let alone an ageing one - is one of the most insecure and doomed careers imaginable.

As a kid, I grew to define what I didn't want my life to be like by sitting behind moaning women on the bus, hearing them bang on about their aches and pains, both real and imagined.

My dad didn't drive - the only dad I knew who didn't.

My second husband believed I had such a fickle attitude to friendship that each Friday he would update the list of my 'Top Ten' friends in the manner of a Top Of The Pops chart countdown.

I have experienced jealousy, possessiveness, verbal abuse and violence from men, but I have also experienced jealousy, possessiveness, verbal abuse and violence from women, usually when I failed to respond to their advances.

It's received wisdom that the English are uniquely child-unfriendly.

Monarchists frequently declare that without the royal family, Britain would be 'nothing.' What a woeful lack of love for one's country such statements express.

No matter how old and glorious the models, sad indeed is the woman who sees fashion as a means of self-expression rather than an agent of social control.

The truth of the matter is, beauty is a specific thing, rare and fleeting. Some of us have it in our teens, 20s and 30s and then lose it most of us have it not at all. And that's perfectly okay. But lying to yourself that you have it when you don't seems to me simple-minded at best and psychotic at worst.

I've always thought of beauty therapy, 'alternative' treatments and the like as the female equivalent of brothels - for essentially self-deceiving people who feel a bit hollow and have to pay to be touched.

Mind you, I've always been a very off-message type of fat broad one who gladly admits she reached the size she is now solely through lack of discipline and love of pleasure, and who rather despises people (except those with proven medical conditions) who pretend that it is generally otherwise.

As a child, I wanted only two things - to be left alone to read my library books, and to get away from my provincial hometown and go to London to be a writer. And I always knew that when I got there, I wanted to make loads of money.