Dear Readers,
Good afternoon, and welcome to Off The Fence, a no-frills weekly newsletter. This week, we have to summit the North Face of the Eiger: 1,500 print subscribers by the end of April. At the time of writing, we have 1,436 of you on the books – become one of the 64 by clicking at this link right here.
If you’ve already signed up, and you’re a fan of what we do, then please do help us amplify our campaign online – there have already been a number of very generous tweets and with just a few more we’ll be right as rain – and able to keep paying our writers, editors and illustrators a fair whack.
Today, there are some features on Keith McNally and the bizarre luxury regeneration of the full English breakfast, but we lead with a dispatch from Fergus Butler-Gallie, who’s been partying with Russians in Egypt.
That Strange Ursine Flex
‘Spasiba Bolshoi!’ This unlikely shout of thanks – declaimed in a heavily accented Arabic voice – emerged from an enormous furry bear costume. The figure, which stood about seven foot tall, had the great lolloping tongue of a Labrador and the maniacal eyes of a cocaine user. It would dance each morning at 11 am sharp around the children’s pool of the resort at which I was staying. Most days, I would limp to the ‘late breakfast’ which was held in the bar there – presumably by way of punishment for those of us who had drunk too much the night before – and down coffee and water whilst this bizarre spectacle unravelled.
Even in April, temperatures at 11am in Sharm-el-Sheikh are generally around 40 degrees centigrade: it was in this heat the poor Egyptian staff member inside the bear had to dance around the pool three or four times to the indifferent praise of a cluster of children. On the final day I noticed that someone had, at least, fashioned a crude air vent roughly where the bear’s anus would be but, this small mercy aside, it was a torturous task.
The bear spoke its final, panted salutation in Russian because almost all of the children for whom he performed – indeed almost everyone around the pool – was Russian. Despite the war, despite the sanctions, despite the pitiful state of the rouble, and despite the large number of Ukrainian flags that have emerged on the main strip, Russian tourists still manage to flock to Sharm-el-Sheikh in their thousands. At the hotel at which I was staying – which flew the flags of the world’s four superpowers (Egypt, the EU, Germany and Ukraine) by its front gate – about half the guests present were Russian. A large percentage, but, as a waiter told me, considerably down on the usual expected numbers. At this period of time, they would normally have three times as many guests – most of the missing number were Russians.
It was clear that much of the life of the resort was shaped around Russian temperaments and tastes. The entertainment reps – who were all young women from Yaroslavl or Yekaterinburg – were now forced to circumnavigate the adult’s pool disturbing the post-lunch naps of elderly French couples in an effort to get them to play volleyball. At the buffet, the strange moulded salads beloved by denizens of Moscow and Petersburg were left to be poked at by leathery Germans or confused Brits. The lion’s share of the herring provided for each breakfast was taken out and binned with great ceremony by an Egyptian cook. It was a resort designed for Russians and filled with Russians, and yet it was almost as if they weren’t there.
Of course, they were there, but keeping a low profile. The staff told me the Russians were normally much more forward in making their presence felt. On the whole they kept themselves very much to themselves. A sort of unofficial segregation reigned – with the Russians of all ages installed round the children’s pool, whilst the other Europeans basked on the beach or by the adults pool. While the staff told stories of past years spent dealing with evenings of song and loud vodka-fuelled toasts, the evenings we spent on the Gulf of Aqaba passed without a single drunken rendition of Korbeiniki. In the bar, they largely drank the abysmal, headache-inducing sparkling wine; where the men had long, involved phone conversations while their wives – women with the corners of their mouths turned down in permanent frowns – chain-smoked thin cigarettes furiously. It was like holidaying inside a Slavic Pinter play.
The atmosphere grew so oppressive that my travelling companion and I decided we needed a break and made for the Sinai desert. There, we chatted with our guide. ‘Who mostly comes out here?’ I asked as we made our way to a desert camp. ‘British, Italian, some Egyptian, German’ he said. Then, without prompting, he informed me with a grim smile, ‘No Russian though. And no Ukrainian. Too busy killing.’
Absent tourists and a Cold War atmosphere: was the conflict in Ukraine really the cause of all this? Had the war really come to touch the hallowed halls of the Steigenberger Alcazar All Inclusive Five Star Resort? On the final day, I decided to drink in the bar near the family pool to see if I could find out. The atmosphere was noticeably more relaxed – perhaps it was us, the Brits, Germans, French and Dutch, who were making the Russians behave so strangely elsewhere? A large woman, whom I had observed eating her lunch with a grim scowl in the main restaurant most days – lay in a pose approaching relaxation on a sun lounger and proceeded to break wind with admirable nonchalance, which elicited a laugh – closer, really, to the gobble of a turkey – from her companion. I sat there with a beer and waited for a good opportunity to strike up conversation using my Russian GCSE.
In the event I didn’t need to. One of the waiters went over, and began conversing with a couple in broken English. On learning they were Russian – which he could probably have learned from the fact that they both wore mullets – he repeated what was clearly a stock patter consisting of all his Russian words: ‘Привет! Vodka! Putin!’ The female half of the couple responded with a flustered ‘crazy man!’ and then went off to the pool as her husband ordered cheap sparkling wine. ‘Spasiba Bolshoi’ I thought. Then it occurred to me she probably meant the waiter.
Baked Beans and Black Pudding
In Sue Townsend’s Adrian Mole and the Cappuccino Years – by some distance the greatest satire of the Blair era – Adrian finds himself as a chef in Soho, running the kitchen at Hoi Polloi, a restaurant on Dean Street that serves a traditional ‘no-choice’ English menu, such as scrag-end of lamb with turnip chunks and damp Yorkshire pudding. Operated by an irascible aristocrat, the Hon. Peter Savage, the establishment operates the most astonishing mark-ups and gets a filleting from A.A Gill in the Sunday Times (‘the sausage on my plate looked like a turd, it tasted like a turd, it smelled like a turd, it had the texture of a turd. In fact, thinking about it, it probably was a turd).
After that review, Hoi Polloi becomes a destination restaurant, there are queues around the block and Adrian (Mole) scores a career as a TV chef. Last week, Townsend’s glorious fiction became eerily real: walking down Greek Street in Soho, there were scores of fashionistas all jostling to get into Sunny Side Up – a traditional English ‘caff’ – sponsored by Veuve Clicquot. Promising to meet ‘fizz with fry-up’, we didn’t have the time to sample the vibe inside, and to be honest, we can’t think of anything more disgusting than champagne and a full English breakfast, but it does appear that stodgy British cuisine is having a moment. In Tufnell Park, the ‘hipster’ joint Norman’s offers natural wine with chicken nuggets and chips, and has an Instagram following we can only dream of.
Maybe we should jack in this magazine lark and set up shop in, say, Stoke Newington, with an authentic 1980s school dinner menu matched with a selection of outstanding new vintages from the Jura? We’ll keep going with the writing for the time being. At least.
Whips and Chains
Ten years ago, Jamie Fewery was a newly minted marketing exec at Penguin Random House, when a funny little book called 50 Shades of Grey came on his desk. Jamie was part of the team responsible for acquiring, editing and publishing the record-breaking trilogy, and you can read his insider scoop right here – stand by for lots of barmy management meetings, branded sex toys and lashings of Bollinger.
Little Lion King
Those of you who love cats – and the editor and deputy editor of this publication certainly do – should direct themselves with great haste to Michelle Taylor’s brilliantly funny tale, in which she narrates the transportation of her gorgeous yet diffident cat, Orlando, from America to Oxford via Charles de Gaulle Airport. It’s accompanied with a lovely Louis Wain tribute illustration from the great Davey Jones, too. And you can follow Orlando’s future travels on his dedicated Instagram account.
Misery on the Mersey
Six months on after Emad al-Swealmeen’s failed attack at the Liverpool Women’s Hospital, two TF staffers visited Toxteth, where the would-be terrorist was taken in by the local church having fled his native Syria. This very Anglican world of bake sales collided with bleach – and bombs – but what made this cheery car enthusiast into a murderer? And how is he remembered by the local community? Our dispatch is available to read here. If you would like to commission The Fence to some reportage for your publication, then do get in touch by replying to this email.
Try A Little Tenderness
With 3,924 of you signed up to this newsletter, and 1,436 print subscribers, it should be easy enough to hit the 1,500 mark very soon – at only £25 for the year it offers quite astonishingly good value. There are also six – six! – TF superfans who have two subscriptions. While we’re grateful to the subject of such veneration, we just need 64 more normal fans and our beleaguered, beloved proprietor will hand us a stay of execution, and we can keep plotting up the next issue of deep dives and deeply, deeply stupid articles. So do the right thing – and subscribe today.
In Case You Missed It
Tyson Fury may have won his fight against Dillian Whyte, but he lost the battle over Daniel Kinahan – Oliver Holt’s dispatch from Wembley Arena looks at how organised crime, celebrity and boxing have become ingloriously enmeshed.
Why would the world’s richest man want to spend billions on a microblogging website? Kyle Chayka has a theory or two on Elon Musk’s lust for power.
Can Wet Leg live up to the hype? Hannah Ewens profiles the unlikely chart-topping duo from the Isle of Wight.
The tale of John Stonehouse, a runaway Labour MP and spy for Czechoslovakia, has fallen out of public memory. Owen Bennet-Jones reviews two books from Stonehouse family members that look to redress the balance.
The many faces of Emmanuel Macron – now immortalised in a perfect meme by Henry Mance.
And Finally
Keith McNally is a London-born restaurateur who has made millions in New York, where his series of establishments have been at the forefront of ‘style’ for some decades now. In 2022, he’s back in his hometown, where he has cooked up his greatest offering yet: an Instagram account which is never not entertaining. Whether he’s sharing nudes, weighing in on ‘issues of the day’, beefing with critics or recounting memories of encounters with some of the most fascinating figures of the late 20th century: this guy knows how to ‘gram. If you have any interesting McNally stories, please do get in touch with us – we’re cooking up a longer article on this Englishman in New York, and would love to hear what you have to say.
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All the best,
TF
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