If Mary Whitehouse were alive, her heart might not be able to take the strain.

Next week a lesbian love story based on a novel by controversial Hove writer Julie Burchill will air on television.

A tale of a relationship between two teenage girls which ends when one sees the other have sex with four boys on a car bonnet, Sugar Rush is likely to cause a stir.

The series stars Olivia Hallinan as Kim, a clever, funny and not-at-all cool teenager in love with her best friend Sugar, the most confident, sassy and outrageous girl at school, played by Lenora Crichlow.

The story, set in Brighton and Hove, was adapted by Katie Baxendale, who helped write TV's At Home With The Braithwaites and Playing The Field.

Channel 4 commissioned it before the novel was even half- finished.

Julie said: "My husband and I went out to lunch about a year and a half ago with this lovely young commissioning editor from Channel 4 called Lucy to sell her this other stuff. Then my husband, out of the blue, said, 'Tell Lucy about your teenage lesbian novel'.

"She basically commissioned it on the three chapters I'd done.

"All the time I was writing it that was exciting, knowing that when it was done it wasn't just going to be a book but it was going to end up on TV as well."

The story, filmed in February, is set in Preston Park, on the seafront and Palace Pier, and in Whitehawk, disguised as a place called Ravendean.

Julie, of Somerhill Avenue, Hove, has lived in the area for ten years and is no stranger to upsetting the moral majority.

The outspoken writer, who earns £150,000 a year for her weekly column in The Times, admits having had five abortions and is married to the brother of a woman she once dated.

The novel Sugar Rush, published last year, was sold with a sticker warning about explicit content - although Julie jokes this was a ploy to boost sales.

She admits it was not a storming success, selling just 4,000 copies, but believes the series has been produced so well it is bound to be a hit. The writer, who had no control over the screenplay, was very impressed by the first three episodes.

She said: "I am pleased beyond belief Channel 4 has seen fit to broadcast my perverted little work - I happily anticipate outrage from Middle England and fan mail from under-age girls."

The story is not autobiographical and out of all the characters Julie most identifies with Kim's "nasty mother", Stella.

The story, she said, is entirely fictional. "I was a very shy and chaste and virginal young girl. It was more my fantasy life. I went around with my head in a book the whole time. I wasn't a teenage raver or anything like that - at least, not until I was 17 and I got my job at the NME."

She admits the content is controversial and, just like the book, the series is likely to appeal to "young girls and dirty old men".

She also knows it will attract attention because of her name. But she hopes the quality of the production will make it a much bigger success.

She said: "If it does become a success it won't be because of me, it will be because of Lenora and Olivia and the people who made it."

Sugar Rush is Julie's fourth novel. Her first, Ambition, sold a million copies.

Julie wants to write another teenage novel but over the next 12 months will be working on four documentaries for Sky TV.

Sugar Rush will be shown in ten half-hour episodes starting on Tuesday at 10.50pm.