Dear Readers,
Welcome to the 40th iteration of Off The Fence, our newsletter-slash-propaganda arm. Issue 9 is snaking its way across Europe, over from the printers in Lithuania, and will be with subscribers very shortly – as long as there are no hold-ups at the border. Which is, of course, a slightly ridiculous thing to type out, but is an unfortunate, tedious obstacle in this present reality. The next time we join you, the magazine will have been shipped out to your homes. If you’re like us, and you spend more time than is healthy on social media (it’s essential to the business!) then please do share photos of the cover and its contents on Twitter and Instagram: the contributors and editorial staff have worked very hard on the latest outing, and nothing flatters their labours more than lashings of digital praise.
This week, we have a feast of vignettes, featurettes and esoteric treats for your viewing pleasure, but first up, a mid-to deep dive into the legacy of a disk jockey from Leeds.
Now Then, Now Then, Now Then
Poppy Sebag-Montefiore has written a piece of reportage into the BBC’s reportage of their former employee, Jimmy Savile, the most prolific sex offender in recent British history. It’s a detailed, infuriating read, one which makes some necessary steps to understanding how the truth of Savile’s 50-year-long crime spree only emerged after he had been buried with great pomp and circumstance.
Savile’s crimes were not reported in the press during his lifetime, but they were commented on. And it is interesting to remember who those people were. In 1996, Irvine Welsh, the author of Trainspotting, wrote a short story called ‘Lorraine goes to Livingston’, which featured a character called Freddy Royle, a DJ and TV presenter with a thick West Country accent, who is also a necrophiliac, an activity facilitated by his sponsorship of a local hospital. Welsh, whose breakout novel ‘offended the sensibilities’ of two members of the Booker Prize, commented recently ‘I had nothing to do with the hospital services, or NHS trusts, or the BBC… so how come I knew this rumour about Jimmy Savile, this eccentric national institution?’
Johnny Rotten, the lead singer of the Sex Pistols, was banned from the BBC in 1978 for outing Savile, and you can hear him discuss that in greater detail here. And in 1988, the Scottish comedian, Jerry Sadowitz revealed, in his typically vituperative tones, how Savile’s charity work was all a ploy to deflect the fact that he was ‘a child bender’.
Johnny Rotten, Irvine Welsh and Jerry Sadowitz are all working-class men who’ve ridiculed the establishment. And as the investigative journalist Meirion Jones states, it’s those very establishment links that allowed Savile to enact his vile fantasies for so long.
The Hare and the Tortoise
This week, Britain’s oldest magazine featured a bracing little piece on nuclear power by James Lovelock, who at the grand age of 102, is very possibly the oldest person to have ever written for the Spectator in their near 200-year history. Lovelock, who has worked as scientist, inventor and writer, might well have found the time to master alchemy, as he looks spectacularly fresh for a man born in 1919, as you can see in this fascinating extended interview filmed this summer.
Cerberus’ Dog Basket
The editor-at-large, Fergus Butler-Gallie, vicar, writer and Twitter-wizard, has taken over the social media accounts this week. On Tuesday, he asked our readers to nominate the one place in the UK that is a probable portal to Hades, and the responses absolutely flew in from all parts of this sceptred isle. Among the many hellish gems, perhaps our favourite came from Jenny Landreth, who provided a photo of the Latchmere Leisure Centre children’s pool, a place that might very well double as Hades’ lair.
Good Housekeeping
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A Dispatch from Dean Street
Ian Dunt, the respected former political editor of the Erotic Review, believes that the al fresco dining on Soho streets was the ‘one good thing to come from the pandemic’.
Can we shock you? The whole thing was unchic; a bane to local residents, channelling footfall into narrow little corridors which made walking to the tube station a crushing odyssey. Also, apart from anything else, London is on an island in the north Atlantic. It is not Malta, Tangiers or Marseille. It is blisteringly cold here for five and half of the months of the year. Good riddance, we say.
Gotta Hex ‘Em All
Halloween is over, and the inexorable crawl to Christmas has begun in earnest. If you’re planning to beat the last-minute shopocalypse that will be wrought by December’s supply chain collapse, then perhaps you already have one eye on getting your present shopping done. But if you’re looking for Pokémon, you will not – we repeat not – be finding them in popular high street toy chain, The Entertainer. Yes, children and overgrown children alike will come up short on any search for adorably fearsome portable war-creatures, by the orders of The Entertainer’s head honcho, Gary Grant. Grant, a devoted Christian who keeps all of his stores closed on a Sunday, is said to believe that Beezlebub himself is the force behind the Pokémon universe, and that such demonic playthings have no place in the paws of English youth. Which, to us, smacks as a gross misreading of Satan’s graphic design skills – but shit, what do we know, he’s the toy expert.
A Farewell to Arms
It seems that every year Remembrance Sunday spills from a solemn hour of collective pause at the Cenotaph to a month-long performance of national mourning, with moments that stretch the bounds of absurdity (in a crowded field, the most ridiculous being the BBC giving Sesame Street’s ‘Cookie Monster’ a poppy-lapel).
Our own contribution to the discourse landed online this week: allow us to present the Poppy Puppy Matrix.
In Case You Missed It
Pooja Bathia recounts her experiences of working at ‘Media Theranos’.
Annique Mossou and Ross Higgins share this informative, and unexpectedly absorbing, guide to spotting doctored images online.
Ever wonder what happened to Matt Taibbi? Ross Barkan wondered what happened to Matt Taibbi. So he's asked What Happened To Matt Taibbi?
EJ Dickson and Steven Monacelli embed with QAnon followers as they wait to see whether JFK Jr came back from the dead on Tuesday. No spoilers, please, some of us haven't finished it yet.
On the 20th anniversary of Radiohead's Kid A, Tim Grierson looks back on one of this century's most enduring cultural artefacts: Nick Hornby's legendarily terrible review of said album.
And Finally
A really bizarre dive into Americana to finish with. 2022 marks twenty years since Disney cynically re-released their Yankee Doodle Mickey album in the wake of the invasion of Afghanistan. The album, which was initially released in 1980, features Mickey, Donald and Goofy singing US military songs about plundering the halls of Montezuma and remarking that nobody can beat the US airforce. Enjoy!
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If you’d like to chat to a member of the editorial team, then reply to this email and we’ll be very happy to ‘chat shop’. In the meantime, enjoy the weekend, and we will join you again soon.
All the best,
TF
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