Julie Burchill

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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