What a surprise I got when I went over to Waterstone's in Hampstead last week. I don't usually go there. The staff are so snotty, so superior. I looked around for some of my own books, and found an excellent one about Eddie Stobart, which I immediately put in a better position, moving out of the way a little titchy book that I thought must be there by mistake, assuming it was for kiddies. Or perhaps it was a joke book, a Christmas stocking filler remaindered from last year, aimed at lads, as the cover shows the back of a naked body. Then I saw the title, Burchill on Beckham. Blow me. So it was true. And I thought I'd made it up.

About a year ago, I offered to be Old Ma Burchill's researcher, if she ever did a football book, willing to explain complicated, technical terms, such as those white posts at the end. We call them goals, Julie pet. And the round thing? That's a ball, my sweet.

I turned quickly to the end of the book to see if I'd got a mensh, as her researcher, but no. When I say "quickly", I mean instantly. The book is so small, so skimpy, I turned instantly to the end. Only 122 miniature pages. Can't be more than 18,000 words.

I thought about reading it, there and then, but I had to be somewhere in five minutes. It would have taken me, oooh, all of 12 minutes. I am a slow reader. But I did glance at the first page.

She starts with a story about Coutts, the Royal Bank, actively courting young footballers to open accounts with them. She thinks this is dead significant, the way that Coutts, the Royal Bank, as she keeps on repeating, want footballers. It shows, wait for it, that they are the new kings. Good one, Jules.

I can just see her little plump smile as she lay sprawled on her little plump sofa, someone having provided this cutting for her. I can use this, she smirks, this will give me an intro.

Quite unaware that Coutts, like all once exclusive banks, have for years been open to anyone with two bob in their pocket. I did a book about Lottery winners, back in 1995, and every posh bank was hounding them, hoping to grab their custom. As for young footballers being wealthy, that's been the case for about 20 years. Where has she been?

Nowhere, that must be the answer, staying plump on her sofa, living life at second hand, relying on the media to tell her what's going on outside. And that, apparently, is how this project all began. She'd picked up, out of the air, that Beckham was a baddy, a hate figure, booed and rubbished, who let the country down by being sent off in the World Cup, seen as petulant and silly and thick. So, naturally, Julie decided to praise him.

If she'd written this immediately, off the top of her pretty head, spinning it out in her Guardian column, doing it just to annoy, then it might have been a reasonable piece. But now, a year later, Beckham is no longer hated. He is a hero, an icon, endlessly praised, endlessly analysed. Her views on him are neither original, refreshing nor stimulating. They're cliches.

OK, so I haven't read the book - but then, Julie hasn't been to a football match or met Bex, so I feel totally qualified in giving my opinion of her book, based on what I've picked up from the media. Just as she does.

She's made a big thing about footballers being wife-beaters, based on only two or three well-known examples, taken from the cuttings. She maintains that fans are closet homosexuals who secretly want to sleep with Bex, which is at least amusing, as we know she's saying it to tease. I heard her on Woman's Hour being asked about another of her contentions, that nine out of ten people who follow football are bad in bed. Asked where she'd got that from, she said she'd made it up. Brilliant.

No, realIy. I do admire her stuff. She writes so well, and keeps it lively, despite having only one trick - lifting something from the cuttings, then taking the contrary view. Yet she's managed to spin out this trick, mixed with a bit of rude-girl sex, for over 20 years now. Well done, gel. She hasn't actually held down the same column, in the same paper, for very long, but moved around, with the same sort of stuff. Which is even more admirable. And she earns a fortune. Excellent - I'm all for that.

I feel flattered, in a way, that she should now bother to come into football, giving us the benefit of her wisdom and insight. It makes football somehow more important, more worthwhile, just by her presence among us. Thanks, Jules.

I wonder what she got paid for the Bex book? It's priced at £10. It might be slim, based on a slim idea, but it's not a cheap project. I guess she got around a £50,000 advance from Yellow Jersey Press, whoever they are. Huge for most authors, but peanuts, really. For someone of her brilliance, stature, irritant power, she must be able to command £5,000 a piece, even at her age, from national newspapers. She's probably been doing us all a favour, bothering to knock out this football book over a long weekend instead of sticking to journalism. I do hope she's not been underpaid. (I know I got rejected as a researcher, alas, but how's about a bit of agenting, Jules?)

But I gather she's got even more for her next book, Burchill on Ben. This is said to be a brilliant analysis and explanation of that loveable, romantic, misunderstood, sexy old rogue, Osama Ben Laden. Her only problem will be to get it out sharpish, before we all come round to that opinion.

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