Peter O'Toole did it for Jeffrey Bernard and now comedienne Jackie Clune has done it for Brighton's own queen of spleen.

After the shocking gossip of abortions, bitter feuds with ex-husbands and mountains of cocaine we are given Julie Burchill the play to sort out truth from fiction.

From her days as a young gunslinger on the NME to her position at the Times today, Julie's 20-year career has seen her point many a vitriolic finger.

Now this piece by Tim Fountain turns the spotlight back on her for an insightful hour-long portrait.

The scene is set entirely in Julie's pink-and-blue living room, complete with leopard skin sofa, an exercise bike, a copy of every paper and magazine you can imagine and a parrot which says: "Isn't Julie clever?"

While her boyfriend lurks off stage fixing the key on her computer, we shadow Julie on the day she decides to leave the Guardian for the Times.

She's just as sharp-tongued as you'd imagine, yet the voice is a surprisingly soft West Country, high pitched and girly and the final picture is a lot more sympathetic and charming than you'd think.

For fans of her columns, there's plenty of the same acerbic wit to giggle away at, from her admission that she's "the lazy sort of girl who gets married because I can't be bothered to masturbate" to her reflection that: "I should have been working in a biscuit factory. Everyone else (from the estate where she grew up) was made into biscuits."

Yet mingled in with the humour are some more serious observations on Julie's uniquely pragmatic attitude to life, including bits on the working class, the death of her parents and even her many abortions, eerily represented on her window sill by five plastic dolls.

Fast-paced, well-acted, poignantly written and funny, this is an engaging portrait of one of the country's more unique characters, which cannot help but fascinate any who have ever picked up one of her provocative columns.

To what extent the play reflects the truth of the real McCoy is hard to say but it was slightly unnerving after the show had finished and we were leaving the building to hear behind us the same girly chirp we had been listening to on the stage all evening.

"Excuse me," it said, "I'm the subject of this show. Can I speak to Jackie Clune please?"