Bitching is getting a bad name, these days. But sometimes it's good to bitch - it lets off tension and nobody gets hurt, argues Róisín Ingle

There is a good and a bad way to bitch. Jade, Danielle and Jo in Celebrity Big Brother, for example, made an absolute hames of the art of bitchery last week. Their dull put-downs of Shilpa lacked wit and intelligence and above all imagination. If there was a bitching Olympics that trio of amateurs wouldn't even get past the qualifying stage.

Of course, there are some people who think even the very word "bitch" denigrates women, but that's to ignore a huge part of the day-to-day discourse between them, and to a far lesser degree, between men. Kate Figes, author of a new book on the subject, Big Fat Bitch, says we are right to be wary of the word - "it's a sexist stereotype" - but she adds that there are reasons why women excel at bitching and believes embracing those truths "liberates us rather than constrains us".

Her theory goes that women spend so much time looking after others, smoothing things over, mopping up metaphorical and actual spilt milk, being a good mother, daughter or wife, that it's inevitable we will sometimes lose it verbally and have a good bitch.

"Girls feel just as competitive and angry as boys, but we are not supposed to show it," she says. "Men seem to feel much more at ease with disagreement and competition. They don't usually interpret everything personally, while women are much more sensitive to the innuendo of everything." So when someone gets on our nerves, rather than cause tension or lose face in front of them, we wait until we are with a group of close friends and "let off steam" behind their backs.

Chatting with a couple of close friends recently, one of them recounted the story of a dinner party where a guest spent the entire night boasting about her various academic and career achievements. After bitching liberally about the self-regarding, ambitious young dinner guest for a few minutes, my friend came to the conclusion that perhaps she wasn't as bad as all that. The bitching session had allowed her to vent her darkest thoughts about another woman. Her inner bitch was given expression, her criticism morphed into acceptance, and there was no harm done.

Another friend bitches about a male colleague. "He irritates me so much that if I didn't get it out of my system it would spill over into my dealings with him," she says. "But because I spend ages laughing and bitching with my friends about exactly how unbearable he is, I can be civilised to his face, which is obviously better for our working relationship. It's a survival mechanism, really."

We also really like to bitch about ex-boyfriends, as veteran agony aunt Virginia Ironside pointed out. "There's nothing more fun than two ex-girlfriends comparing notes about the same man," she said. "It's not attractive, and when I do it I feel guilty about it, because that's not the sort of person I want to be, but it is so amusing and comforting to share with someone else all kinds of experiences that make one laugh."

Nobody likes to be thought of as a bitch but few of us can hand-on-heart say we've never done it. Whether you are being narky about the woman who took ages in front of you at the supermarket or tearing strips off the newsreader whose make-up appears to have been applied with a trowel, you are guilty of bitching. We bitch to bond and we bitch to wound. If this makes you feel like a disgrace to your sex, don't forget that hard-core feminists, women who are beyond caring what anybody thinks of them, are often the bitchiest of the species.

Journalist Julie Burchill's notorious spat with Camille Paglia is an excellent example of two really clever bitches at work. Burchill had written a scathing review of Paglia's Sexual Personae and a flurry of faxes between the two ensued.

Paglia: "I am read and translated around the world from Japan to South America, and the basis of my fame is not just journalism . . . you are a very local commodity completely unknown outside England."

Burchill: "It's great to see an academic cube like yourself get with it. I'm very glad you are big in Japan."

Paglia: "You think yourself madly clever but I'm afraid your enfant terrible personality is a bit tattered."

Burchill: "Dear Professor Paglia, F*ck off you crazy old dyke."

Feminists might be the bitchiest of the lot, saying stuff most of us would never dare to, but bitches can be found everywhere. There are literary bitches - take a bow Jane Austen's Emma. Hollywood bitches - yes, we mean you, Paris Hilton. And lots of journalistic bitches, such as Terry Keane in her Keane Edge days. Not forgetting legendary bitches Mae West and Dorothy Parker.

Winston Churchill was one of the few male proponents of the art, especially when it came to lightning-fast ripostes. "If you were my husband, I'd poison your coffee," Lady Astor once said to him after a row. "My dear," he replied, "If you were my wife, I'd drink it."

And Alice Longworth, the daughter of President Roosevelt, had clearly embraced her inner bitch. Embroidered on a cushion in her house were the words "if you don't have anything nice to say about anyone, come and sit next to me". What a bitch.

The Big Fat Bitch Book For Grown-Up Girls by Kate Figes is published by Virago