Beginning as a staff writer at the New Musical Express at the age of 17, she has since contributed to newspapers such as The Daily Telegraph, The Sunday Times and The Guardian.
Indeed, she managed to decry the first self-released punk album in the UK, The Outsiders' Calling on Youth featuring Adrian Borland: "Apple-cheeked Ade has a complexion that would turn a Devon milkmaid green with envy.
[10] Her main employers after the NME were The Face and The Sunday Times, where she wrote about politics, pop, fashion and society, and was their film critic from 1984 to 1986.
Her sympathy for Thatcher helped in gaining a column for The Mail on Sunday, where in 1987 she went against the paper's usual political line by urging its readers to vote Labour.
"[11] Burchill has spoken repeatedly and frankly of her relationship with drugs, writing that she had "put enough toot up my admittedly sizeable snout to stun the entire Colombian armed forces".
I simply can't imagine that I could have ever had any kind of social life without [cocaine], let alone have reigned as Queen of the Groucho Club for a good part of the '80s and '90s.
"[1] In 1991, Burchill, Landesman and Toby Young established a short-lived magazine Modern Review through which she met Charlotte Raven, with whom she had a much publicised affair.
"[19] In 1996, the actor, author, playwright and theatre director Steven Berkoff won a libel action against Burchill in respect of one of her articles, published in the Sunday Times newspaper, which included comments suggesting that he was "hideously ugly".
"[20] The late 1990s were a turbulent period for Burchill as she has recalled: I got the heave-ho from my cushy billet at the Sunday Express, where I later learned my nickname had been "Caligula’s Horse" because my best friend – briefly the editor – had appointed me.
[23] Journalist Deborah Orr, who was then married to Self, was scathing in The Independent of Burchill and her article: "She does not identify herself as a cocaine addict, so she has no pity for Ms Westbrook.
In 2002 she narrowly escaped prosecution for incitement to racial hatred, "following a Guardian column where she described Ireland as being synonymous with child molestation, Nazi-sympathising, and the oppression of women".
The middle classes can't bear to see people having more fun, so they attack Chavs for things like their cheap jewellery.
[37] Later it emerged, during a Guardian interview published on 4 August 2008,[11] that eventually she "was given the jolly old heave ho" by The Times, and paid off for the last year of her three-year contract, still receiving the £300,000 she would have earned if she had been obliged to provide copy.
[39] Burchill's co-written book with Chas Newkey-Burden, Not in My Name: A Compendium of Modern Hypocrisy, appeared in August 2008, and is dedicated "to Arik and Bibi" (Ariel Sharon and Benjamin Netanyahu).
Revolutions in the region have a habit of going horribly wrong, and this may well have something to do with the fact that Islam and democracy appear to find it difficult to co-exist for long.
[46][47] The editor of The Observer, John Mulholland, responded on the comments page to what he described as "many emails protesting about this piece" and stated that he would be looking into the issue.
[48] Liberal Democrat MP Lynne Featherstone, formerly a junior Minister for Women and Equalities, called for the dismissal of Burchill and Mulholland in response to the piece.
[52] In her 1987 essay collection Damaged Gods: Cults and Heroes Reappraised, Burchill criticised what she called "the anti-Semitism of politicized American blacks" such as Jesse Jackson, who had referred to New York City as "Hymietown."
[55] In June 2009, The Jewish Chronicle reported that Burchill had become a Friend of Brighton and Hove Progressive Synagogue and was again considering a conversion to Judaism.
[56] According to TheJC, she had attended Shabbat services for a month, and studying Hebrew, she described herself as an "ex-Christian", pointing out that she had been pondering on her conversion since the age of 25.
Tel Aviv-based writer Akin Ajayi in Haaretz thought "the reactionary solipsism of Unchosen is far removed from the affectionate warmness that a love of the Jewish people can be".
[62] In his review in The Independent, Keith Kahn-Harris described Unchosen as "occasionally touching, sometimes bigoted and sporadically hilarious" but that it "often degenerates into EDL-style abuse that lacks any redeeming wit.
"[63] In The Guardian Will Self wrote, "I’m afraid I can’t really dignify her latest offering with the ascription 'book', nor the contents therein as 'writing' – rather they are sophomoric, hammy effusions, wrongheaded, rancorous, and pathetically self-aggrandising.
[1] In November 1980, former Sex Pistols front man John Lydon gave an interview to Ann Louise Bardach in which he referred to Burchill and Tony Parsons as "toss-bag journalists, desperately trying to get in on something" in response to their book, The Boy Looked at Johnny, and described its chapter on amphetamines as "stupidity".
In 2005, on the 25th anniversary of the murder of John Lennon, she told The Guardian: "I don't remember where I was but I was really pleased he was dead, as he was a wife-beater, gay-basher, anti-Semite and all-round bully-boy.
"[82] In the essay "Born Again Cows" published in Damaged Gods (1987), she wrote: "When the sex war is won prostitutes should be shot as collaborators for their terrible betrayal of all women.
"[83] On 6 June 2021, and shortly after the announcement of the birth of Lilibet Mountbatten-Windsor, the daughter of the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, Burchill tweeted: "What a missed opportunity.
[86] In 2020, Burchill posted a series of defamatory tweets of Ash Sarkar, which included claims that she condones paedophilia and is supportive of Islamist terrorism.
[89] In March 2021, after being sued for libel and harassment, Burchill retracted her comments, issued a full apology and paid substantial damages to Sarkar, including her legal costs.
[99][100] In an article for The Sunday Times Magazine, she wrote of his inability over many years to experience pleasure and the serious mental health issues from which he suffered.