Julie Burchill, remembered

When I was told that a newspaper had asked someone to write my obituary, my first instinct was excitement. I’m not easily offended and I’ve always been an attention-seeker. Once, when I was fat, a magazine printed a photograph of Jabba the Hutt and said it was me. I cut it out and pinned it on the wall above my typewriter with other images that inspired and amused me. Another time, when I was doing loads of drugs, I made it on to an online Death List of the ten public figures most likely to turn their toes up in the near future; again, I found this highly entertaining, and went around boasting to my drug buddies about it.

‘Her career was a succession of burning bridges, which she sped away from, cigarette between her lips’

My husband said the timing of this obituary is meaningless. ‘It’s