Dear Readers,
Good afternoon, happy new year and welcome to Off The Fence: a weekly newsletter vehicle to accompany the quarterly print magazines, which are loaded with beautiful illustrations (unfortunately, this email is plain text, but we might remedy that in due course). In 2022, we will be joining you on a Monday, which is very exciting for everyone concerned. Throughout the year, we will be offering up our singular mix of deep-dives, featurettes, gossip, tips & more. Please do share, screenshot and recommend it to those who would relish it.
For only another day, we are open for pitches for Issue 11, and you can send these through to editorial@the-fence.com, where we will be delighted to hear from you. There are some very, very exciting things in the offing for the next print iteration: it’s going to chunk out by 12-16 pages, and will be brimmed up with pieces both stupid and sublime from the most exciting young and youngish writers on the block.
If that’s the sort of thing that floats your boat, then you can support us by subscribing at the perishingly low sum of £25 for the year through our webstore right here.
This time out, we’ve got some bits on freebasing, fast fashion and the intricacies of Chinese history. But first, let’s talk about TOWIE.
How to Win Friends and Influence People
Last week, Molly-Mae Hague, the Love Island runner-up and 2015 winner of Miss Teen Hertfordshire drew fiery criticism for claiming on a podcast that we ‘all have the same 24 hours in a day’ and that she has worked her ‘absolute arse off’ in her career so far.
Among her other obligations, Molly-Mae has a role as creative director of Pretty Little Thing, the fast-fashion brand that has weathered multiple controversies (most recently, a Sunday Times investigation found that PLT’s parent company, Boohoo, was paying its employees in Leicester as little as £3.50 an hour).
While you may not look to reality show contestants for moral instruction, it is intriguing to look at the cast of characters that comprise The Only Way Is Essex and wonder why their activities are not more widely acknowledged.
Initially centring around the Wright family, the show has lumbered through to its 28th series, with the original stars now established in the world of light entertainment.
Over the last decade, the show’s stars – and their partners – have been imprisoned for dealing cocaine, armed robbery and acid attacks.
As some reporters have noted, the Wright family are friendly with individuals in the top echelons of organised crime, with some particularly interesting material being contained in the secret Operation Tiberius report, which described Mark Wright senior as an associate of the ‘untouchable’ Canning Town boss, David Hunt. According to the document, Both Mark and his brother Eddie were registered as police informants, though as Michael Gillard suggests in his book Legacy, ‘the anti-corruption squad questioned whether Wright was in fact a double agent who while giving information about Hunt’s organisation was also passing information back to the police.’
Mark Wright denies that he was ever a police informant, and he describes David Hunt as ‘laid back’ and a ‘very reserved man’, though in a libel court case, Mr Justice Simon ruled that he had little difficulty in accepting that Hunt was the head of ‘an organised crime network implicated in extreme violence and fraud’.
Over the Christmas period, Debenhams chose the Wright family to promote their wares, and you can watch their festive gift guide here.
Monster Mash
Like many of you, we have been transfixed by the now unfortunately iconic photo of Ghislaine Maxwell (child trafficker), Harvey Weinstein (incarcerated rapist) and Jeffrey Epstein (deceased paedophile) dressed in resplendent finery for Princess Beatrice’s 18th birthday at Windsor Castle way back in 2006.
What was this party like? We spoke to one of the 300 guests, who told us that they had a spectacularly good time, and while they don’t recall chatting to the felonious trio, they did dance with Demi Moore and talk about shooting with Ashton Kutcher. Shooting films? Not quite. The lanky heartthrob turned tech bro had been dispatching pheasants in the English countryside, and wanted to tell everyone about it.
Too Hot for CCP
If you’ve been anywhere near a London tube station in the last couple of years – and looking at our analytics, at least some of you have – you may have come across an enormous billboard for ‘Shen Yun – 5000 Years of Civilization Reborn’. That may have been as far as you got with it; it was for us. The London Theatre listing goes a bit further: ‘Discover China before communism’. Okay. ‘Featuring one of the world's oldest art forms – classical Chinese dance – Shen Yun brings to life the enchanting beauty and profound wisdom of ancient China.’ Alright. ‘This culture, with its deep spiritual roots and profound worldview, was displaced by the communist regime in China.’ Ah, okay, yes – it's Falun Gong again.
As unpicked by Jia Tolentino a couple of years ago, it turns out that Shen Yun does not, in fact, rebirth 5000 years of civilization, but instead serves as outreach for the pernicious neo-Taoist cult and its extreme social conservatism. So, if you’re in the market for an evening of agitprop and can’t stomach another belting of ‘One Day More’ at the Sondheim Theatre, might we recommend Shen Yun’s denouement – a tsunami with the face of Karl Marx.
Build Me Up, Buttercup
There are still a few copies of Issue 9 left on sale, though Issue 8 has now sold out. If you’d like to access the archive, then you can do so at this link here. You can also buy a subscription – or individual copies – for friends or family. Simply put the ‘billing’ details under your own names, and then place your giftee’s address in the ‘shipping’ section of the menu. It’s a beautifully simple process.
Every Little Helps
A few years back, Róisin Lanigan lived next to Haggerston Tesco Express, widely derided as the worst supermarket in London (there was even a broadsheet feature about it). Astonishingly, it is still open, and Róisin has written a bitingly funny feature on shit Tescos, poor choices and a woman who gave birth in the chilled goods aisle of Tesco Hackney Central. You can read the piece here.
Cancel Couture
For all the big talk about diversity and sustainability, there are many aspects of the fashion world that remain byzantine secrets: not publicly discussed by insiders, and certainly not reported by journalists keen to maintain their access to the most glamorous creative industry.
Christopher Shannon is a menswear designer from Liverpool, who was seen as the Next Big Thing around a decade back, but has now gone back home.
In this extended interview with 1Granary, he delivers a broadside on the economics of the London fashion world, on the pernicious influence of online retailers and the questionable judgement of the British Fashion Council. It’s most forceful when discussing the extraordinary pressure that young designers are placed under. We haven’t read anything quite like this: do check it out.
In Case You Missed It
One canny curator has uncovered Donald Trump’s dormant Vine account, which the former President used predominantly to attack one of his long-time rivals – disgraced New York ex-congressman Anthony Weiner.
Lockwood on Knausgaard, Lockwood on Knausgaard, Lockwood on Knausgaard, Lockwood on Knausgaard. Need we say more?
The dark lord of the dartboard, Ted ‘The Count’ Hankey, bends the universe to his will in this hypnotic (and unsuccessful) twenty-second set.
Nigel Farage has abandoned politics to pursue his lifetime ambition of full-time Graham Greene cosplay, dispatching himself to snowy Belgrade to fight on the very frontiers of the Culture Wars.
Indian news site the Wire documents a stunning trove of right-wing Hindu nationalist cyber-warfare material, which makes for a grim, but grimly fascinating, read.
Fresh from spreading/inventing claims of Norman Mailer’s posthumous cancellation, hyper-selling author and world class shit-stirrer Michael Wolff discovers how Twitter works.
And Finally
We’ve started to get slightly tired by the discourse surrounding a certain bespectacled wizard and his billionairess creator. Yes, the books are very good, and the films are too, but they came out more than 20 years ago. Let’s move on.
We want less Harry Potter, and more Dean Potter, a Californian daredevil who has produced the most mind-boggling suite of stunts. He’s famous for inventing freebasing (not that type of freebasing), which combines free-climbing (no ropes!) with base jumping, and he also loved taking his dog wingsuiting. This extended clip here, which is pretty damn terrifying just to watch, shows what a virtuoso climber he was.
Yes, we have switched tenses here, because after watching those videos, you may be unsurprised to learn that he died in an accident in 2015. Still, he did push forward the boundaries of what is possible during his short life. And not many people do that.
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That’s the lot for this Monday afternoon, and we’ll be joining you a week hence. We’ll be in the office all week, so do reply to this email if you’d like to have a chat, send a pitch or talk shop. Issue 11 is really coming together, and we also have a very cool merchandise launch to share with you officially. Exciting times!
All the best,
TF
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