Julie takes on loony Clune

Jackie Clune likes Julie Burchill - even if she doesn't entirely believe in her. In the course of preparing to play the wicked word-smith in a one-woman show, she's been down to Burchill's Brighton home several times. She and writer Tim Fountain even accompanied Burchill on a three-day press jaunt to Venice. They've become friends.

So Julie Burchill likes Jackie Clune too. She devoted a column to heralding her stage impostor as 'a brilliant actor, singer and comedian' - and not, she insists, just because Clune is 'seven years younger and seven stone lighter' than her.

It can't last, can it?

'She's a really sweet, kind person - on the surface, anyway,' says Clune, toying with a Diet Coke in the Soho Theatre bar during a break from rehearsals. 'But even she would say she was just mimicking other people's good behaviour.

'If we ever get too lovey-dovey with her, she goes: "I'll drop you. I'll drop you in the end. I prefer feuds to friends." So it's like dancing with the devil. Which I love. I find people like that really exciting.'

She's not alone. Julie Burchill Is Away... had its run extended before it even opened: good news for Clune and Fountain, who raised the money for the show themselves ('Julie has a lot of rich fans'). Despite her spooky lack of physical resemblance to her subject, anyone who's seen one of Clune's stage shows, which blend campery with her hard-nut stand-up, will know why she's the woman for the job. Both of them hate 'a lie in the atmosphere', she says.

Her last show, Bitchin', was about how she put aside years of lesbianism to have an affair with a gay man - Tim Fountain, as it happens, now her ex. If Clune is forthright in general, imagine what she's like with a partner.

'We have a very, very tempestuous relationship. Basically because he's an arsehole. [She's joking. I think.] No, he's very chippy, and so am I. We've had a couple of full-on screaming rows. But it's always about the work.' Fountain was eventually barred from rehearsals.

She's got a new, straight boyfriend now: 'That means I've finally grown up.' This year's Edinburgh show, Boy Crazy, celebrates her new-found love of men. Or it should do, anyway - she hasn't written it yet. (Funnily enough, the show has Burchill doing everything she can to avoid writing her column.)

Meeting Clune, you can believe her when she says she's spurred on by an impatience with lazy thinking. Is she worried that talking about going straight will lose her her gay following? 'If it comes to whether or not I have to sleep with girls to make ten quid, I think I'd rather work in Sainsbury's,' she replies. She's sharp, quick, a good listener and a great talker. Since quitting her job as a theatre lecturer at London University, she's had two months out of work. She's been in EastEnders, sung the theme to Channel 4's Smack The Pony, appeared in The Vagina Monologues, hosted a show on GLR ... but most of her work has been self-generated. A show a year. 'I'm always knackered.' After Edinburgh, she'd love to be paid just to act for a while. 'Let someone else take the strain.'

Then again, Julie Burchill Is Away... could be a hit. Madonna for the West End cast change? 'Julie thought Rachel Weisz. But yeah, Madge, Gwyneth, get 'em all in.'

But this deftly written evening of Burchillia was made for Clune. And while she shares her subject's articulate abrasiveness, she remains curious about Burchill's Teflon toughness.