26 The Argus, Monday, September 6, 2004 woman INTERVIEW The Argus, Monday, September 6, 2004 27 Lesbianism, ill-fated affairs and bad friendships: Julie Burchill has drawn from personal experience for her new novel Angst and PICTURE: SUSANNAH BINNEY 94926-DG-2 IT’S the August Bank Holiday and the sun is out. But instead of soaking up the last of the summer’s rays on anger on the beach, I’m in suburban Hove, feeling somewhat anxious as I repeatedly ring a door bell that the page doesn’t seem to work. Fortunately, the door is quickly answered, not that this entirely quells FOLLOWING my nerves. After all, it is Julie Burchill Julie Burchill’s who opens it. Just novel, Sugar Perhaps one of our most celebrated Rush, we’ve columnists, Julie’s reputation for discovered that outspoken comment, caustic wit and a little teenage apparent disregard for anyone whom she rebellion can be hurts with it makes her a fairly a good thing. formidable companion for lunch. Here are some She is, however, surprisingly disarming other books and apologises about the broken bell. to dip into for “I just haven’t got it fixed,” she says. “I inspiration: got so many weirdos and stalker-types ringing my door, I thought that might help put them off.” ON THE ROAD Sleek in black and high-heeled stiletto boots, Julie is a lot taller than you by Jack Kerouac imagine and a lot thinner too. THE classic tale of a road trip through Then like most things about Julie, it’s America, this book has been the bible hardly any secret that a recent diet has of many an angst-ridden teenager meant that she’s lost loads of weight. looking for This was apparently inspired by a fear some direction of getting so fat she would have to be in life. Dean airlifted out of her house to get hospital Moriarty and treatment. Sal Paradise Before we get into the waiting cab, she speed through disappears back inside to say goodbye to the desert her son Jack, who’s now 18. consuming Julie’s marriage to Jack’s father JULIE vast quantities Cosmo Landesman ended ten years ago, of alcohol. A before which she was married to fellow thinly disguised NME journalist Tony Parsons, with It takes a very particular kind of friend seller but more recent forays into fiction to go, ‘Mum, please don’t show me up autobiography, whom she had a son, Bobby. But while to really impress Julie. have sold less well. again.’ this book is Bobby and Julie apparently don’t speak, “I need someone even tougher than “I thought a teenage book would be “It’s like I’m psychopathically touched filled with a Jack and Julie clearly seem close. me. Then I can hide behind them as well, easier to write than an adult one. It only by music in a way that other human cast of More recently, Julie got hitched to which probably isn’t a great thing to say took me ten afternoons but that’s because emotions just can’t get to me. characters Daniel Raven, her partner of nine years BY but it’s true.” I really enjoyed writing it. “But I still can’t work out if it means from Kerouac’s life and has influenced who’s not only 13 years her junior but LOUISE Julie is certainly shy. It’s rare to see “Some people have said that means I’m a really emotional person or just a American fiction since its publication in also the brother of Charlotte Raven, with pictures of her and the reason is she I’ve ripped off the publishers by taking cold monster.” 1957. whom Julie had a very public affair just RAMSAY doesn’t like having her photograph the advance and not putting in the work. She then admits she actually bought before she and Daniel got together. taken. Then as we tuck into lunch But what’s the good of working hard per Coldplay’s first album, Parachutes. THE CATCHER IN THE RYE Lesbian love also happens to be the The book’s also a deliciously comic and and guzzle down wine, her eyes rarely se? It usually means you don’t enjoy what Either way, Julie’s love of music, by JD Salinger subject of Julie’s latest novel Sugar enjoyably salacious read that resounds make contact with mine. I am uncertain you’re doing and it’s a slog. But you can’t whatever it really might be, hopefully how much of this shyness is actually sell a book on a slog. means she’ll enjoy writing the next book. JD Salinger’s tale charts the journey of Rush, which is what we’ve met up to talk with the kind of language we’ve all come an American teenager in the depths of about. A teenage novel set in Brighton, to love Julie Burchill for. an act. “With most of the other books “I’ve got to enjoy it,” she says. “Or I “I was pathologically shy as a teenager. I’ve written, I’ve been glad when I’ve won’t be able to do it. depression. Lonely it tells the story of Kim, a nice middle- It also seethes with detail about Holden Caulfield class girl from Preston Park who falls Brighton in a fantastically observed Trouble is, once you’ve been shy, you finished them. But with this one, I’m “After all, I’m not driven to write any never think of yourself as an former shy wondering what I’m supposed to do next, more through ambition and I get all the struggles to come to for her new best friend Sugar, a girl from vignette of this City Julie so clearly loves. terms with his life the other side of the tracks in East While the lesbian love story is the bit person. particularly when I come in drunk after money I need from my Times’ column. So “My friend asked me how I could think lunch. cash isn’t exactly a motivation.” as he wanders Brighton. that grabs the headlines, the various the suburbs Positively bursting with all the relationships in the book also reflect the of myself as shy because he walked into a “I’ve got a habit of doing things well Other projects Julie’s involved with restaurant to see me performing Big the first time, then the second time, I’ve include plans to turn Sugar Rush into a of New York. elements guaranteed to put Middle intense peer-rivalry that can operate in Teetering on England into a spin, it carries a label female friendships. Spender and I wasn’t even drunk. lost interest so it isn’t as good. serial for Channel 4, though the project “Thing is, now I think I’m just lazy “Hopefully, though, I’ve now found a has yet to be greenlit. the brink of warning about explicit content. Julie say: “I had quite a lot of friend- adulthood, Holden “That’s just on there to get people ships like that at school. But while and use my shyness as a way to pull form in which I can excel more than She’s also had a play written about rank.” once.” her called Julie Burchill Is Away, is trapped in a going,” says Julie as we’re shown to our you can be forgiven for doing it then, I world he doesn’t table at seafront restaurant Due South. don’t think over-intensity is appropriate By this, she means doing things like Julie is already planning another which has already gone down well at getting me to pick her up from her house teenage novel, this time about a girl Edinburgh and is coming to Brighton in understand and “I knew it would get people hopping in an adult friendship. Women can makes the most of up and down. I like doing that. It’s so easy get really possessive, particularly when in a cab rather than meeting me at Due who’s unhappy at school and, as a conse- the Autumn. South by claiming that she didn’t want to quence, loses herself in music. “I was so flattered when the writer it by uttering as many expletives to do. they’re single. I can’t be doing with as he can to shock the reader. “You’ve just got to push a few buttons that. I’ve even had to let some of my walk in there on her own. “I am completely obsessed with approached me,” says Julie. “Though, so lightly and, bang, they’re like a bunch women friends go. This whole female Perhaps she hasn’t got over all those music,” says Julie. “Though my taste is at first, I thought it was one of my of jack in the boxes. But to be honest friendship thing has got a bit too big for adolescent-style friendships quite as well really unrefined. I love dance music, real ex-husbands playing a trick on me, just ROMEO & JULIET there’s more sex in a Beatrix Potter novel its boots. as she thought. handbag house. to try to show me up for being egotistical.” by William Shakespeare “See, if someone’s trying to make you Julie got married a few weeks ago at than this one.” “All this Sex And The City s*** gives “Me and my best friend have managed PERHAPS the greatest tale of teenage feel stuff, like Coldplay or Radiohead, it’s Brighton Town Hall. Because she was It’s certainly true the novel is a lot less the impression that women have got to alienate almost everyone we know,” rebellion ever written, Shakespeare’s like they’re telling you what to feel. Like promoting her book, the newlyweds explicit than at least some teenage to be constantly communicating and she admits. “In that way it is a bit like a cautionary love story still rings Noel Gallagher says, it’s bedwetters’ couldn’t go on honeymoon, though they magazines and, according to Julie, gabbing the whole time. teenage friendship but the difference is true today and music. plan to go to Antigua next year. teenage novels as well. “Some of them “With women’s friendships, there’s there’s no weirdness to it. She’s just a has been “But dance music lets you fill in the “I do nothing for ages then everything are filthy,” she says. something very neurotic about the really straightforward person.” reincarnated in gaps. I used to cry at this house track happens at once,” says Julie. “It’s not Don’t, however, let this put you off. constant need to have feedback about While Sugar Rush is Julie’s first countless film they used for a Walls Ice Cream advert very Brighton, is it?” Even wet liberals like myself can’t help what you think and what you do. teenage novel, she’s had a clutch of adult and television in cinemas. It was so embarrassing. She’s referring to what she calls but be attracted to the naughtiness of the “That’s why I could never be a lesbian. novels published. adaptations. A Jack was only little then and he used Brightonitus, the effect this city has on subject matter. All that constant yak, yak, yak.” Ambition was her first and was a best- simple but drive and ambition. effective plot – “It’s not so bad for me because I moved boy meets girl, down here at 35 expecting to go into semi- boy gets girl, retirement. But if you come from boy loses girl. here, it’s not so great. The lifestyle is so Burchill bitches – quotes from the first lady of venom Events overtake seductive, anyone with any drive and themselves and LOVE her or loathe her, there easy contraception and abortion – treat it differently from the other ambition can just lose it. hurtle towards is no denying queen of the things to make life easier for men, major religions.” “Then people wake up one morning at a tragic end but columns Julie Burchill has in fact.” 40 and wonder where did it all go? It’s “Sex on the whole was meant to be not without some had readers hooked since she quite sad really.” Calling the Irish flag: “the short, nasty and brutish. If what you steamy love scenes and nail-biting duels. first put pen to paper. Here are Hitler-licking, altar boy- want is cuddling, you should buy a Julie, meanwhile, has places to go. some of her more memorable molesting, abortion-banning puppy.” “Last time I left Jack at home, I got into quotes: SKINHEAD Irish Tricolour.” trouble with AOL because he was “It has been said that a pretty face is abusing people on Born Again Christian “Oh please, spare us all from “That’s Islam, then – fun, by Richard Allen France... What a worthless bunch a passport. But it’s not, it’s a visa and sites,” she says, swigging down the last of fun, fun! Not a mention it runs out fast.” REQUIRED reading for all rebels in the of bullies and braggarts the her wine. “So I better get back.” Seventies, musician Morrissey named one of the women tortured, French are.” the Christian “Show me a frigid women and, nine We wander off along the seafront of his singles after the books. Joe “A good part – and definitely converts executed, times out of ten, I’ll show you a little looking for a cab and I’m worried about Hawkins and his the most fun part – of being a the apostates man.” Julie’s boots, the heels of which are gang spend their feminist is about frightening hounded, the “Fame is no sanctuary from the starting to buckle. days looking for men.” slaves in passing of youth... suicide is much “That’s the one problem with this trouble. Pop Sudan being town,” she says. “Sometimes it seems too “My rule about eating animals: easier and more acceptable in concerts, pub sold into Hollywood than growing old far to walk somewhere but just not far brawls and football Don’t eat those that are too ugly – torment right enough to get a taxi.” turkeys, rats – or too beautiful – gracefully.” matches all give now. Call me a Unconcerned about her footwear, she them the chance to lambs, deers. Just stick to the “Now the whole dizzying and filthy racist – decides it’s best to walk. vent their sadistic moderately attractive ones.” delirious range of sexual go on, you Sugar Rush is published by violence. Think possibilities has been boiled down to “The freedom that women know you want Young Picador, price £9.99. Clockwork Orange were supposed to have found in to – but we have that one big, boring, bulimic word – with a little less the Sixties largely boiled down to reason to be suspicious of Islam and to Relationship.” Louise Ramsay [email protected] SEX, LIES AND MEASURING TAPE: Julie Burchill has transformed herself with a crash diet but her talent for outspoken comment remains as strong as ever sophistication.