Julie Burchill: Working-class hero

There’s nothing quite like a bit of class warfare. Julie Burchill, talking about the “obesity crisis” on the Today programme this morning, made me choke on my porridge. She said:

At a time where the gap between rich and poor is growing bigger, when state schools are much worse than they used to be, it’s so easy to blame these awful chav working class parents for stuffing turkey twizzlers down their kids faces. And not actually tackling the real root of the problem, which is the filthy class system of privilege and nepotism in this country, which means that even jobs that used to be open to bright working class kids – like being actresses or journalists – are being completely overrun by dumb middle class brats, whose parents have got them their jobs.

You don’t have to agree with her view to appreciate her fire. Entirely refreshing stuff. Hear the rest of the self-confessed redneck’s brilliant interview here.

Murad Ahmed

Comments

[Richard Young]

Nah - it's just rubbish. There was a time when Burchill had fire, wit and a grasp on reality. Now she's firing broadsides that are just missing the target. There's almost a point in what she says - and then she just lurches off (perhaps for effect) and the whole thing is ruined. Like her theory that her working class football heroes of yesteryear were all scarfing down chips and nothing else. Hmmm... Alan Ball dead of a heart attack at 61... not great timing, Julie.

[B. Adu]

I have not been able to hear J.B.'s views on the 'ob. crisis' but I do know that class is definitely an element here. Fat has become a stealthy way of attacking the usual suspects in a less open way, look at who are the fattest groups.

[Guy Collier]

Fire?

More like the increasingly irrelevants wafflings of a woman so desparate to retain public attention it's become laughable.

Yesterday she was calling dyslexics 'stupid'. That sums her up.

She's become nothing more than a vicious harpy hell-bent on aligning herself with a working-class ideal that no longer exists.

[Alice]

Burchill is one of the best writers the UK has produced in decades.

[Sue]

I think that more people are eating so called junk food as people have less time to cook meals. Many children live only on fast foods and many are not very healthy.