Lily Allen and Julie Burchill renew class war

Julie Burchill and Lily Allen have renewed their years-old class war after the contrarian columnist called the popstar-turned-fashion-dilettante an "over-privileged cry-baby".

In her column for the Sun this week, Burchill, controversial as always, explained why she "adores" US X Factor reject Cheryl Cole.
One of those reasons, it turns out, is because of "the way she spat back at that over-privileged cry-baby Lily Allen when the public-school tool took a poke at her way back in the day".

Allen, who is well-known to be an assiduous Googler of herself, read the piece and shot back via Twitter: "Julie Birchill [sic], you are an ignorant and bitter old troll, but I guess you know that already."

Such words are water off a duck's back to Burchill, who thrived for years on winding up Guardian readers in a weekly column.

What really appears to have got Burchill going was both the misspelling of her name and a later tweet by Allen: "The amateur psychiatrist in me says see's [sic] a lot of her younger self in me, and she's a bit of a 'self-loather' #poorjulieburchill".

Writing in her Independent column today, Burchill said: "Being called self-loathing by Lily Allen is an achievement akin to being called fat by Dawn French (which I have been.)"

She goes on to recall how the last time she compared Allen to Cheryl Cole she received an email from Allen's mother, the film producer Alison Owen, requesting that she leave her daughter alone.

Burchill republishes in full her reply to Owen, which begins: "When we first make a choice - as your daughter did - to enter public life, there is a lesson above all which we must quickly learn if we are not to appear stupid. Sadly, it is a lesson of common sense, and thus one which a public-school education cannot buy. And that lesson is, 'If you dish it out, you must take it'."

Allen is yet to reply to Burchill's latest barbs; perhaps she is taking the columnist's parting words of advice: "If you go through life taking notice of what people like me say about you, you will never be one tenth as happy as I am now." ·