However annoying and strange-voiced Julie Burchill may be, there's sometimes a grain of truth in what she says. In this case, the grain is quite small. In The Sun today, Julie says that those who claim to hate reality shows, who voted things like Big Brother as one of the worst inventions of all time, are in fact probably hypocritical snobs who are actually saying they hate the young and the working class. (Julie, of course, is neither any more, but it's nice of her to stick up for 'them'...)

"BB-haters, in no particular order, hate the young. They hate the working-class. They hate gays and trannies. They hate people who have sex more than once a fortnight...envy is in there somewhere - despite the protestations of pity that the haters have for these "freaks"."

Perhaps, to some degree, this stuff is true. A lot of the things Julie says, though, do make me wonder whether she's seen the show at all...

"The majority of people who go into the BB house are kids from unmoneyed backgrounds who went straight from school to work; BB is their "gap year", packed into six frenzied weeks."

Erm, like Jonty, Carol, Liam... even Ziggy? And where's she getting the 'six weeks' from? The last series was a whopping 13 weeks long.

"Unlike middle- and upper-class kids who drink themselves stupid and upset the locals in places as diverse as Cornwall and Goa, they do so in a controlled environment, spoiling no one's hometown - albeit that they do it in front of millions."

I think we're done with the Gap Year analogy.

"I did turn down the cycle of Celebrity BB which GG appeared on, her high point of which was VOMITING ON A ROUNDABOUT, WITH A COLANDER ON HER HEAD. I turned it down because I'm old and rich, and because I believe that BB should be a springboard for the young and poor."

A springboard to what? A small amount of money for a small amount of time? What's Brian Belo doing now? I'm all about the reality shows, obviously - doing this website - but I don't think it's appropriate to elevate Big Brother to the level of a kind of noble passage for young people's careers.

"When we see the winner in tears as they leave the house to face the first victory they have most likely ever enjoyed in their lives and we cry along with them, we do so not because we are sentimental simpletons brainwashed by the evil backroom boys of Big Brother but because we have finally understood a person who at first seemed perhaps somewhat strange to us."

To some extent, I guess this is true. But Julie forgets that Big Brother is just about telly. Not class or individuals. It's not an impartial presentation of all of human life that allows us to see finally what people are like, or acts as a kind of lens to our prejudices - at least no more than any other telly show. It's not real. It's just. Not. Real. To watch it and say you now understand these common people who were strange and scary to us beforehand, Julie, is to participate in the attitude you're criticising; to betray your own inherent feeling of difference and your need to feel different. To feel like you can't get close to those people in case you get contaminated by that 'youthful exhuberance' the working class are so awfully good at, too.

I may be wrong but surely people who don't watch Big Brother aren't all snobs. They're just people who prefer a quiet life, or people who don't have 13 weeks to commit to a show about nothing, or people who get bored quickly. I know you still like to think you're terribly punk and unexpected, but if you tar all with the same brush in an attempt to win the votes of the ones you consider poor and needy, Julie, you'll end up being called a hypocrite yourself. It's not always about being a loser. Sometimes it's just about being different to you.

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