The people of Brighton are to get an insight into 24 hours in the life of one the city's best known and most controversial residents: famously outspoken columnist Julie Burchill.

Set entirely in Julie's living room complete with leopard-skin sofa, statue of Lenin and a toy parrot that says "isn't Julie clever" all the action takes place in a single day: The day Julie decides to leave The Guardian for The Times.

Jackie Clune, the star of the onewoman show, says: "I don't want to give too much away but I will say that the reason for her move is amazing, and what the play's author Tim Fountain has written is the absolute truth."

The reason she's so sure about the accuracy of the play is that she and award-winning playwright Tim spent hour upon hour with Julie while putting the piece together.

"Tim was interviewing her and I was just observing her speech and mannerisms," says Jackie.

"We went round to Julie's house a lot I can say that the living room in the play is a faithful depiction and we even went to Venice together. We were a gang of three."

As a result of this shared time, Jackie feels she is able to give a truthful portrayal of Julie's character, substantially different to the impression her writing might create.

"In print, she can come across as this hard-nosed Fleet Street hack," explains Jackie, "but when you meet her she's got a friendly West Country accent, a tremendous mind and an incredible wit. She's funny and likeable and warm.

"Some people are actually quite cross that they like Julie as I play her and I've been told by a few people that the way I'm playing her is wrong but it invariably turns out that the people who say that have never actually met her!"

It was their shared admiration for the First Lady of Fleet Street which inspired Jackie and Tim to conceive the play, although Jackie is keen to point out that the play's tone is by no means reverential.

"Some people hate the show simply because they hate Julie Burchill, but it's a play, not a fanclub.

"I just play her the way she is in fact, in real life she's probably nicer!"

Love her or hate her, few would dispute that, in her two-and-a-halfdecade career to date, Julie has established herself as one of the country's highest-profile writers. From her arrival at the NME at the age of just 18, she went on to become founding editor of The Modern Review, to write various novels including the classic Ambition and her autobiography I Knew I Was Right, and to pen columns for a string of newspapers right up to her current post at The Times.

Her personal life, which she has never shied away from making public, has been equally eventful: her ill-fated marriage to Tony Parsons remains a subject of many a vitriolic exchange.

She went on to marry another journo, Cosmo Landesman and follow it up with a third marriage to Daniel Raven having first had a fling with his sister Charlotte. (She laughs at the idea that this makes her a lesbian, however, saying: "If you go on a daytrip to Bruges, it doesn't make you Belgian.")

It makes great sense that, after sell-out stints in London and Edinburgh and rave reviews, the show is finally being performed in Brighton, a place which Julie loves.

As she wrote in one Guardian column, "I have been living in Brighton for one year and three months now and I do not believe I will ever want to leave especially not to go back to London.

"The difference is that Brighton looks like a town which has just had a multiple orgasm London looks like a city with post-coital tryst."

Rather surprisingly the queen of spleen' is actually pleased with her supposedly warts-and-all portrayal and describes the play as "a work of genius".

"It is the most fantastic play", she says in her characteristic, high-pitched voice. "Most of all, pathetically, I'm very glad that I'm being played by a beautiful woman some seven years younger and six stones lighter than myself.

"Imagine if it had been Dawn French! I'd have had to leave the country!"

Julie clearly believes the play shows her as she is. "It is in no way flattering but nevertheless makes me seem loveable.

"One of the things about myself I like best, and which I find in short supply generally, is my lack of hypocrisy, and this comes across extremely well. But I will say no more as it will start to sound like showing off which I never do"

After 25 years of dividing the nation through her writing, Queen B clearly has no intention of quieting down and a play which makes her its subject is sure to be equally controversial.

As Jacke Clune sums up: "Some people find it really inspiring, as a story of a working class girl who was meant to go to work in a biscuit factory but went on to Fleet Street.

"Some people simply find it very funny; and some people are really offended by it. But whether people like it or not, the good thing is that you're pretty much guaranteed a strong reaction."

Starts at 6pm, Tickets £12/10.