Airing controversial views is the great skill of Julie Burchill's career But first, a little background. My career in national newspapers has spanned almost exactly the same period as Burchill, so her columns have been a soundtrack to my journalistic life. While I disagreed with some of her opinions - particularly her vehement Zionism and deep admiration for Margaret Thatcher - I venerated her as a true original who, through the power of her prose, regularly made you ashamed for following conventional wisdom. And if you didn't get her point, she'd put it in CAPITAL LETTERS just to make sure. She's written at various times for almost every national newspaper, and her departure from each of them was generally marked by a blizzard of accusations and recriminations. Her removal from the Daily Express was particularly savage. In an editorial, the paper said: "From now on, we will listen to the wishes of our readers, and the first wish is to get rid of Julie Burchill." As her editor at The Independent, I found her utterly professional - her column was on time, on length and, invariably, on the money - and her unwillingness to follow the party line refreshing. After 30 years, you know what you're getting with Julie Burchill, which makes the stance adopted by her current employer, The Observer, puzzling. The story is this. Suzanne Moore, also a fine columnist of long-standing, wrote a magazine article in which she railed against the pressure for women to look like, as she put it, "Brazilian transsexuals." Cue uproar on Twitter, where Ms Moore was subjected to a barrage of insults from transsexuals, who claimed offence. Burchill stepped in to defend her friend and, as is her way, went that little bit further, describing transsexuals as "a bunch of bed-wetters in bad wigs." The Observer was bombarded with complaints, and - outrageously - the MP Lynne Featherstone demanded Burchill's sacking. The Observer, the paper that bravely opposed the invasion of Suez in 1956, immediately removed the article from its website. What kind of country is this? Are we so cowed by vested interests that free speech, which includes the freedom to offend, is now constrained? Does the Twitter mob now set the rules on fair comment? In a statement, the editor of The Observer said his paper "prides itself on... airing challenging views." True. He ends by saying: "On this occasion we got it wrong." Surely some mistake. That should be: "On this occasion we got it right."