Julie Burchill

As with most liberal sexual ideas, what makes the world a better place for men invariably makes it a duller and more dangerous place for women.

Tears are sometimes an inappropriate response to death. When a life has been lived completely honestly, completely successfully, or just completely, the correct response to death's perfect punctuation mark is a smile.

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

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.

I am firmly of the opinion that women who make a lot of effort to hang onto their looks in middle age (unless they are beauties, entertainers or prostitutes) are rather sad, as one should surely have something more substantial to recommend one by this time, such as kindness or cleverness.

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

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.

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.

I don't really care what people tell children - when you believe in Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny and the Tooth Fairy, one more fib won't hurt. But I am infuriated by the growing notion, posited in some touchy-feely quarters, that all women are, or can be, beautiful.

As a precocious teen I dreamed of being Graham Greene. Well, as it turned out, I never wrote a great novel, sadly, and I never converted to Catholicism, happily, but I did do one thing he did. That is, in middle age I moved to a seaside town and got into a right barney with the local powers-that-be.

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.

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

One Christmas build-up tradition, however, has totally bypassed me - that of going up to town and 'doing a show.'

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.

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.

Tears are sometimes an inappropriate response to death. When a life has been lived completely honestly completely successfully or just completely the correct response to death's perfect punctuation mark is a smile.

We sat there smiling at each other, shimmied to a standstill, thinking about all the boys that had wanted us that day, and how none of them had got us, not for a minute; how we'd let them pay for drinks and candyfloss and then run away laughing, their cries of 'Slags!' and 'Bitches' ringing in our ears like respect rather than derision.

It was the flashing lights, and the noise of the machines, and the loud, loud music, all seeming to refract and contract around her, her eyes widening, her hair swooshing, her slow smile shining. She seemed an actual part of the place - all fun, all joy, all shimmery skittering energy.