Julie Burchill

Julie Burchill (born 3 July 1959) is a controversial English writer, who started work for the New Musical Express at the age of 17, she has written for newspapers such as The Sunday Times and The Guardian. She has several times been involved in legal action resulting from her work. She is also an author and novelist and her 2004 novel Sugar Rush was adapted for television. Her controversial articles have included being happy that her parents were dead and accusing John Lennon as a wife beater, gay basher and an anti-semite. .

Links To Peel
In 1999, Julie Burchill controversially wrote an article called Rake's Progress accusing John Peel being a racist, because he played punk music in the late 70's, which was predominantly followed by white people. Of course this was false, as Peel regularly played reggae music during that time as well, whose music was supported by black people. Peel fought back with the allegation and sarcastically mentioned on his show on 06 October 1999:


 * "(The QEH concert was) an event which got a good review in the Guardian, and I was quite pleased about that. They failed to point out on this occasion the racist policies that determine the music that goes into these programmes, because they had a perfect opportunity to do so, because Lonnie Donegan is white, and so are the members of Half Man Half Biscuit: well, more a kind of liverish pink, to be perfectly honest, but certainly that is the case, and an opportunity missed there."   

On the same article, she also accused him of being a pedophile, by marrying a 15 year old and accepting sexual favours from young girls. In reality in both instances, Peel didn't know the ages of the girls and did not pro actively looked for girls, who were underage. In an article published on the Guardian on 23rd July 2000, where Peel was interviewed, he mentioned:


 * 'A lot of the things Julie Burchill writes I kind of agree with,' he says gloomily. 'But then she goes off on one, and it kind of undervalues all the other stuff she's written. I hate being misrepresented.'   

After Peel's death in 2004 and the recent scandal on Jimmy Savile, she has avoided writng an article on him.