JULIE BURCHILL I have got a computer! After all those years
swearing that I wouldn't, too. I've written ten books over the past 20 years bloody brilliant ones, if I do say so myself — on a succession of, basically, toy word- processors, and have always laughed off the Jeers of jealous journo chums by pointing out to them that, although their machines may enable them to download the new Limp Bizkit record, book their holidays in Cambodia and play Mortal Kombat with their friend in Kosovo, they've actually seen precious little active service in the way of creating anything remotely resembling an actual book. Writers are well known for their susceptibility to displacement activity, when almost anything — a little light dust- ing, talking trash on the phone for hours, and/or drinking oneself insensible — seems more urgent and attractive than the job in hand. A sophisticated computer simply provides numerous windows of opportunity to avoid real work even further, while giv- ing the shirking scribe the appearance of actually buckling down to it. It seems to me that more books have not been written because of computers than have, but, as there are too many books about anyway, this is probably a good thing. So anyway, my story is that I bought my computer by default, simply because my old fax machine broke and the new one I was sold by BT turned out to have more temperament than Dusty Springfield, necessitating its swift return. The Christmas post is unreliable and, for some reason, the stingy types I work for seem to object to sending messen- gers from London to Brighton and back again. So a computer seemed the only Option. Nevertheless, I maintained to my now smugly approving friends — 'It'll change your life!' — what sort of sad, silly little life could be changed by a computer? If I figure my life needs changing I'll simply dump my nearest and dearest and run off with a young sex-pot to another town, same as I always have. The computer would only be used as a combination typewriter and fax machine. The optional extras could go hang. Especially, I vowed, I would not be one of those sad little people who spend their life and their savings on the Internet usually feeding some fetid little fetish which previously they would have been too embarrassed to pursue in the real, face-to- face world. Yet within 20 minutes of getting my beautiful, shiny, pristine new iBook out of its box, I was typing 'sex with dogs' into the search engine. Sometimes I think I'm not very nice.
Apparently Dawn French is getting a bathtub specially made because she can't fit into her old one any more. I'm sorry, each to his own and all that, but I think that's disgusting. And, to make it worse, aren't French and her hubby Lenny Henry just exactly the sort of meddling, holier-than- thou luvvies who are always popping up on TV to tell us how greedy the West is and how the Africans haven't got any water? That's hardly surprising, is it, considering the amount Dawn French must use every time she fills up her new trough. Because Dawn French and I are both fat, we're sup- posed to be buddy-buddy, but I've never seen the logic in this and took great delight in snubbing the approaches she made to me during the Eighties. When she asked me to take part in a South Bank Show about how great fat women were and how vile thin women were, I'm afraid I sent her a very rude note telling her that I could think of nothing worse than looking at her big fat mug in the flesh every day for three weeks, so I wouldn't be joining. I also added that some of my best friends were skinny girls, and I found it extremely anti-feminist and distasteful how, in pursuit of some sort of Fat Pride ideal, she was forever dissing her slender sisters for being sexless and neurot- ic. When the programme was finally broad- cast, there was a list at the end of fat girls who'd made it big, so to speak. And there was my name, repeated about 50 times in huge letters! This seemed a strange course of action for a supposed supporter of fat rights: seeking to hurt someone who'd crossed you by calling them fat! I decided then and there that French very probably wasn't the jolly, sex-mad plump girl she seeks to portray herself as, but rather as screwed-up, bitter and hostile as any whingeing anorexic. Her constant emphasis on how much sex she and Henry had seemed the phoniest claim of the lot, and when they adopted a baby instead of having one as a result of sex I wasn't too surprised. Darling Dawnie probably thought pregnan- cy would make her lose her figure — either that or she didn't like the thought of eating for two, instead of for four. Everyone was amazed when Henry was caught slipping around with some skinny blonde, but I didn't blame the poor sod one jot. And now dear old Dawn can't even fit into a normal bathtub — and still Terry's persist in employing her to advertise their famous Chocolate Orange. I can't help thinking that this is not just bad logic — who wants to think that eating chocolate will get them into such a state? — but also quite irre- sponsible. If she keels over with a heart attack, her blood will be on Terry's hands. And they'll never shift another Chocolate Orange again, that's for sure.
Even in this age of sexual equality, there are simply some things that women can get away with that men can't. A woman who cries looks sweet and vulnerable; a cry- ing, man looks like a self-pitying prat. A woman in a red sports car looks cool and free; a man looks like a sexually insecure Yuppie scumbag. A woman who lies about her age looks scatty and ultra-feminine, if a bit of a bimbo; but a man who lies about his age seems weird, even creepy. As youth is prized in women far more than in men, a man who lies about his age seems to be muscling in on female troubles, and more than a little camp. My ex-husband, Tony Parsons, since finally achieving success with his fifth novel, Man and Boy, has been lying about his age to all and sundry, saying he's 44 when in fact he's 48. What exactly is the point in this? Is there really that much dif- ference between 44 and 48? After all, Sean Connery is a sex symbol at 78. Mr Parsons, with his cheeky grin and interesting hair- line, should not be so hard on himself.
o — 2001, eh? One of those Buzz Years, like 1984, that some rabble-rousing shyster once wrote a depressing book about, thereby sending that section of the population who are prone to believing that authors have a clue about anything into a decade-long funk. But it was fun, when 1984 came and went without mass brain- washing, to throw this in their faces, and I daresay when 2001 is over and we're still not all in thrall to computers we'll get the same satisfaction. Now please excuse me, as I've got to go and look up more 'sex with dogs' sites on the Internet.
Previous page
