sashinka | observation orientated, with a twist of lime | a blog

Julie Burchill's spewed her stuff this morning on feminism, body dysmorphia and role models. All my usual topics of conversation, then.

Julie Burchill Is Away is on at the Soho Theatre from June 10th. Toby Young has a walk on part on the first night (which sadly, I can't make).

I worked with Toby and Julie on the Modern Review in the early nineties. It happened like this: I had been travelling for a while, got back and was sleeping in my friend Mike's spare room, wondering what to do with my life. He was a huge Julie Burchill fan, and a Modern Review subscriber. One alternate-week, there was an ad saying "looking for students to help us" so I called up Toby, went and met him for lunch, and when I came back I was the Marketing Director. On the same - unpaid - basis as all the journalists, I hasten to add. But then the whole thing ran out of Toby's front room, which was the first street from the car-clamping place in Shepherds Bush, and not a good place to park.

I did a bunch of campaigns , and got Mike and his business partner involved in writing ads. Julie Burchill sent him flowers at work; he couldn't believe his luck. Most of the people involved were quite blokeish, as I remember it, and there were girls, but they were generally the moneyed-girlie-types and called Anastasia or something (not that I should talk about names). I learned a lot about sex, drugs 'n rock'n'roll. Then I got a real job, and became publisher - on a make-up-your-own-job-title-basis - and was on the Tube one day and saw a picture of Julie holding hands with Charlotte Raven (who'd been in my year at Manchester University, and we hadn't let her write on Mancunion, the student newspaper, becuase we didn't think she was good enough. Just shows, eh?), and read a story about Toby closing the magazine in High Dudgeon. That's at the end of the Northern Line. [Off-topic aside: Charlotte and Derek Draper were a power couple even back then.] The magazine's had a couple of incarnations since then, and every time I read the Culture Section of the Sunday Times, there's a slightly familiar feel to it...