JULIE AND COSMO – THE TOUGH AND THE TENDER?

Julie Burchill and Cosmo Landesman in the same room. Could ever such a thing happen? Well it did – at Covent Garden’s Horse Hospital on a skin-flaking December night. December 2nd to be precise. Both were there to discuss their respective memoirs and in particular, some small recollections of their marriage. Can a memoir ever be subjective? Is an entirely straight account simply boring?

Two people, once lovers, sat on the stage – with journalist Katie Glass between them. There was a crackle of anticipation. Many people in the room knew Burchill, or were fascinated by her unusual, unquiet life.

It was clear as the night progressed that Julie and Cosmo are very different people: Julie is a modernist and a mischief-maker. She believes in ‘candour in all things’. Candour was clearly once a worry for Cosmo, as he once put a stipulation in their divorce papers that Julie never spoke about their relationship. When Cosmo spoke publicly about their relationship first and broke his own embargo, she saw it as a release to do the same, albeit with great discretion. ‘I was a gentleman,’ she said quietly. Cosmo is much more of a measured and melancholic soul but his description of the young Julie tip-tapping out words while asking sweetly to be fuelled on more booze and cocaine - still producing ‘perfect copy’ - was a revelation. ‘I was taught by a master,’ he admitted and his tone throughout was seemingly fond, nostalgic and self-deprecating. They both remembered the ‘cold vodka and hot sex’ of their early affair. In contrast, the notorious bileophile Julie was disparaging about Tony Parsons, her first husband. He was, she said, always keen to come to London to parties to ‘be all cockney and also be my bespoke fucking guard dog’. It was clear that Cosmo – her ‘hot jew’ had been an escape, an adventure and a breath of clean, unpolluted air.

Their first meeting – or memory of it – was an example of how subjective memoir truly is and how detail is remembered so uniquely. Cosmo met the ‘hip young gunslinger of punk’ and she met the ‘son of the parents who have an open marriage’. The young Julie was all legs and pale skin, whereas Julie saw Cosmo as a young John Taylor from Duran Duran, without the flounciness. Or the hair. ‘Now you look like a Jewish grandmother,’ she giggled. Cosmo’s peculiar family – the subject of his memoir - was talked about a great deal.

Julie read a chapter from her memoir Unchosen called ‘Meet the Perverts’. Cosmo’s family were notoriously into free love and they pottered, kaftan-kinky, in a crumbling house in Islington that they had picked up for a song in the sixties. Cosmo describes his father Jay wearing purple nail varnish and his mother in a see-through kaftan at the school gates. ‘Were you jealous of your father?’ asked Julie. ‘I guess I was,’ said Cosmo. His father was a libertine but a very successful one, with women at least. The fact that he tried to blag his way into parties with his ‘I’m Julie Burchill’s father in law, don’t you know!’ truly placed him as a wannabe, besotted by celebrity. Cosmo’s mother Fran once berated the clean very working class Julie for throwing away mouldy bread. ‘I dislike beards on men,’ said Burchill –‘ …but I dislike them even more on bread.’ She was pretty brutal about his parents and described Cosmo as the ‘only intelligent person in that house’. A house she nicknamed Slaggy Heights. ‘Not so much Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner,’ she said, ‘…but more Guess Who’s Coming to Do You…’ It prompted a member of the audience, who knew the Landesman family well, to stand up during open questions and make a long defence of the parents. She wasn’t the only person to make a statement rather than ask a question, as some people seemed to have missed the point of a time for questions.

During open questions, a woman garbled a little about being middle class – most of us lost her point – whereas Julie told her sweetly: ‘I can tell that by the way you talk.’ (She was high end posh). It was a great putdown and some of us were choking with laughter. Burchill is funnier than a donkey on acid slipping on a banana skin. She gives you belly laughs because that’s exactly where she kicks. Cosmo throughout simply shrugged at the stories and muttered ‘true…true’. I actually quite liked him and wasn’t expecting to. Julie was very generous in complimenting his book and he gave her a number of sincere compliments too. Not a love fest, but a relationship with a certain amount of respect, particularly as they share parenting.

Ultimately, there were some fiery moments, but no blood drawn. Or at least, none dripped. Julie did sneer at Cosmo’s romanticism of the past. ‘You think things were better then,’ she told him. He denied it, but his protests faded away pretty quickly. When, during their marriage, he told her he was writing the great London novel. Later in his life, his failure to do it successfully was always a regret for him. The Tough and The Tender was the intended title. ‘Sounds like a butcher’s memoir,’ Julie giggled to the audience. But she was unimpressed by a suicide in the novel of a character very obviously based on her: a woman who ultimately throws herself off Brighton Pier. ‘If I had written about you throwing yourself under a lorry in Tesco’s car park, you wouldn’t have been happy. It’s so mundane. But you are more of the suicidal type than I am,’ she said wryly.

Cosmo painted well the fire and fun of their life together. Yet he rarely smiled. He seemed to have a melancholic core that has hardened over the years. He talked about the young punky girl teasing him and call him a fucking ponce with one ‘crazy demonic finger’ – pushing him to write when he was tangled up in angst and procrastination. He admitted once to only 250 words and he was known for rewriting shopping lists. ‘Just hit out the fucker,’ was her advice. I was reminded of the glorious film Betty Blue – where beautiful troubled Betty acts as a strange but effective mentor to the blocked writer Zorg.

However, if you think that I am referring to Julie and Cosmo as the tough and the tender in the title, you would be very wrong. Julie showed a great deal of tenderness during the evening, particularly in the way she described her parents: ‘straight out of Thomas Hardy novel’. She talked quietly too about the Stalinist influence she inherited from her father, which faded eventually but formed a lot of her opinions at the time. She considered that each new marriage was better and Cosmo gave her confidence, was the sherpa who took her up the mountain. At the summit of course is now her Dan, the brother of Charlotte Raven, who she originally left Cosmo for. ‘I will die in my marriage, ‘ she said, before apologising for being ‘operatic’. Cosmo also talked about being with Julie as ‘winning the lottery of love’.

But ultimately, the subject of Julie’s memoir Unchosen is her love of the Jewish faith. It was only brushed upon during the evening but she is very clearly fuelled by this love. She now has a happy marriage and her Jewish faith. Her eyes shone and she sat up straighter whenever Judaism was discussed. Cosmo pronounced Judaism as ‘Judyism’ in his chewy American accent and called himself a ‘bad jew’. He was quickly corrected and for a second, you saw the solid husband-wife combo in their comfortable berating of one another. Two writers in the same house must have created interesting chemistry. Cosmo argued that she was not quite so pro-jewish when he knew her, but Julie vehemently denied that.

A tough and tender lady indeed. I feel Julie Burchill – the heroine I so admired in my bondage-trousered teens – is tough in terms of not accepting any bullshit, but is tender in terms of friends she loves, a husband she adores and a faith she will be fiercely faithful to for the rest of her life. But don’t think settled and slippers – that is not her style. There is still the same naughty insolent spark in her eyes and when she told the story of Cosmo asking her about books on her bedside table when she was younger, her remembered reaction was typically scathing: ‘Bedside table, I said! I don’t have a fucking bedside table! What am I – 50!’

Now 50 has come and gone, but Julie Burchill still has energy and things she wants to do. If she has climbed a mountain, from the evidence of that evening, she has not only arrived at the top, she is planting flags everywhere with happy, well-oiled hyperactivity. I hope she and Cosmo take their banter on the road. They have so much to say about marriage, the process of writing and the world as we are experiencing it now. A great night.