Dear Readers,
It’s early evening on a Friday night, and outside our office just off Shaftesbury Avenue, it seems that all of London is gearing up for a last weekend of drinks, dinners and ill-advised afterparties, as we look forward to a winter of fuel shortages and panic buying, all with the comforting presence of a pandemic lurking in the background.
On Monday, we shared the target of 1,000 print subscribers by the end of the year. 14 of you signed up that day, and at this rate of growth, we will reach that lofty goal. So, if you’ve been enjoying this newsletter, please do sign up today through the webstore right here, or you can gift one – as a couple of you did – for a friend or a colleague who might like what we do here. Issue 9 has been to design, where it is being plumped and preened by the decorous hands of Mathias Clottu: there are a number of very, very funny articles within, including a piece from Russell Brand’s former publicist, who recalls what it was like to work for the tousle-haired comedian during his noughties pomp.
This time out, we’ve got some top-notch fashion gossip, and some tributes to a couple of great TV shows, but first: a toast to the bride and groom.
My Pretty Little Thing
The Kamani family have made literal billions from their fashion empire, which includes Boohoo.com. The company has boomed during the pandemic: in January this year, it purchased Debenhams for 55 million; a month later it announced that it was buying the former Arcadia Group brands, which includes Dorothy Perkins. An investigation last year found that workers producing clothes for Boohoo at a Leicester-based company were paid as little as £3.50 an hour, and there were allegations that factories in that city, who were supplying Boohoo.com, were forcing employees to work even when sick, even as the coronavirus kept Leicester in a six-month long lockdown.
The ‘rag trade’ is an unforgiving business, and Mahmud Kamani has a reputation for not suffering fools gladly. And this plain-speaking attitude was even present at his son’s wedding, where he gave what can be euphemistically described as a ‘powerful speech’ welcoming his new daughter-in-law to the family. You can watch the whole affair – which was held on the shores of Lake Como – in this video here, with Mr Kamani’s touching tribute beginning at around the 1.17 mark.
Check the Rhyme
Issue 10 is scheduled to land in the first week of December, so if you’d like to write for The Fence, then send an email to editorial@the-fence.com, and we will come back to you promptly. At the moment, there is some space in the ‘facts’ section, and we’re really keen for comic bits of reportage about London life, of around 1000-2000 words. Industries like finance, the law, sport, music are of particular interest. But if you have a pitch that is so weird that you don’t think anyone else will take it, then send that our way, too. Over the last couple of days there have been some fantastic ideas landing in our inbox, so get us while we’re in a commissioning mood. It’s also important to say that writers who haven’t had scored their first byline yet are very, very welcome indeed.
What a Load of Flannel
The physical iteration of London Fashion Week returned this week after an 18-month long absence, but for the Northern Irish designer, J.W Anderson, it came too soon. He chose to continue the ‘show-in-a-box’ format, where printed materials displaying the season’s new looks are sent to the home address of chosen industry figures, critics and so on.
It’s been an interesting time for Anderson, whose company has significant backing from LVMH. Last May as the pandemic was in its full dystopian swing, Vogue asked 53 London-based fashion designers to draw a rainbow for the NHS, as our nurses and doctors sacrificed themselves to try the coronavirus at bay. Nearly all the designers rose to the challenge magnificently (we especially like the contributions by Osman Yousefzada and Mary Katrantzou). But if you look at slide 15, you will see the contribution from J.W Anderson is a rather child-like scrawl of a rainbow.
Anderson deputed the task to a far-off assistant. His excuse? He didn’t have any crayons at home.
Hmmmmmmmmm
Reports circulate that Wes Streeting, the 38-year-old Labour MP for Ilford North, is limbering up to prepare a leadership bid, all as the vultures start to hover over Sir Keir Starmer’s LOTO prospects. Like anyone who came of age in the noughties, Streeting documented his life via social media - so should be given some slack. At the same time, we can assuredly say that few millennials of Streeting’s vintage ever posted tweets as exquisitely cringe as this one.
Make That Bread
While having an office means that the workflow is easier; the job more pleasurable, it also means that we are prey to the fortune-hunters of the Wild West End: namely a stationery shop on Berwick Street, which charged us £28.50 for 30 sheets of A1 paper. It must be noted that is £3 dearer than an annual subscription to The Fence, and we do offer a little bit more than blank pieces of paper. It seems we may well be in the wrong game, so do sign up here at the very agreeable price of £25 only for the year, or we may well end up hawking pens, pencils and gluesticks to harried, gullible media workers at rip-off prices before retreating with the loot to Bocca di Lupo for lashings of sea bream carpaccio and a glass or four of Greco di Tufo.
De Mortuis Nil Nisi Bonum
Way back in the Before Times of June 2019, we published a dispatch from a nameless literary insider. With tongue firmly in cheek, they supplied would-be writers with 12 rules to follow so that they, perhaps, might see their name frozen in the window at Waterstones Piccadilly. After posting the article on Twitter again, it suddenly enjoyed a second life online. Lots of people said it was depressingly accurate, a few readers wanted to know who wrote it and a couple of troubled souls chose to interpret the article as a straight piece of journalism. Anyway, we digress, you can read it here at your leisure, and please let us know how it strikes you by replying to this email (but only if you’d like to).
Pull Up to The Bumper
Very sadly, Willie Garson, who played Stanford on Sex and the City, has died of pancreatic cancer at the age of 57. The pre 9-11 series of SATC captures Manhattan in all its dirty glamour, back when travelling to New York felt like travelling a couple of years into the future. If you’re keen on a nostalgia trip, but you don’t want to get invested in Carrie Bradshaw’s romantic travails all over again, then dive into these two timeless features by the great Nancy Jo Sales.
The first follows Leonardo Di Caprio, then the most desired man on the planet, as he causes havoc in the bars and clubs of the city with his group of buddies (feat. Toby Maguire & David Blaine) who self-style themselves as the ‘pussy posse’.
Hip-hop became the most dominant cultural movement on the planet in the 90s, and this piece follows a trio of privileged kids as they sidle up to Puff Daddy, Jay-Z and Q-Tip in downtown clubs as they try to make it as fashion designers and club promoters on the downtown scene. And googling what the whole cast of characters are up to now is a naughty treat for later.
In Case You Missed It
Twitter-comedian-cum-just-ordinary-comedy-writer-now Demi Adejuyigbe has done his sixth (and apparently last) annual September 21st video, and it's a pretty astounding escalation from his last.
How does Spotify compensate artists? Not just how much, but how? Dada Drummer Almanach comes through with the numbers in this illuminating, and calculator-overheating explainer.
The nights are drawing in, so why not don your best brogues, pour out a few glasses and indulge in some Irish Door Dancing?
Comedy writer and punishment glutton Mike Benner took to Twitter to ask ‘what's the worst tweet you've ever seen?’. The replies shall guide your heart to a deep, and dark blue sleep.
Even the most committed adherents of the ‘please stop making things about Harry Potter’ cohort, may be swayed by Arianne Shahvisi's moving, and lyrical tale of a childhood between Essex and Tehran, Iran Was My Hogwarts...
… only to be re-radicalised by the framing to this piece on Brexit-induced shortages from Jonathan Freedland. No more columnists. Columns are cancelled until we can figure out what’s going on.
And Finally
For the last twenty years, TV mavens have tried to reimagine Channel 4’s seminal talk-show After Dark, in which six eminent minds would discuss the Big Topics of the Day, whether that was the state of Nicaragua, the morality of pornography, or the existence of the British secret state. What made the show distinctive was the liberal accompaniment of alcohol drinks to facilitate the conversazioni, which famously backfired when the actor, Oliver Reed, sloppily embraced the American feminist Kate Millett.
As discourse and highfalutin ideas became a big draw in the last decade, so more than a few producers have tried to come up with a format which captures After Dark’s edgy brand of intellectualism, where you mix whisky and philosophy together and stand back and watch the sparks fly. Indeed, a member of The Fence was there for quite a few of those meetings with a nameless youth media conglomerate whose name rhymes with ‘spice’. For whatever reason, the mooted series remained rooted in development hell. But it was a very good idea.
How funny, then, that the person who revived the show in its fundamental format of ‘alcoholic beverages plus no-barred chat’ was the refined mind of Nigel Farage himself, with the segment ‘Talking Pints’ on his primetime slot on GB News, the highlights of which you can watch here.
Over its four year-span, After Dark had an array of brilliant guests, including Marie Colvin, Tony Benn, the Bishop of Durham, Lord Longford and Clare Short; ‘Talking Pints’ hosted the former UKIP leader as interviewed Sean Spicer via Zoom call.
Whether anyone can revive After Dark in a more faithful fashion remains to be seen. You can be assured that we will be watching, and hoping, that someone can.
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We’ll be back next Friday, but in the meantime, you can chat to a member of the editorial team by replying to this email. As was said up top, there are some very exciting articles landing soon, and we’re looking forward to sharing them with you over the next couple of months. Enjoy the weekend and speak soon,
All the best,
TF
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