Dear Readers,
Good morning, and welcome to Off The Fence, a newsletter that now has 4,100 of you receiving these mail-outs, and as this glorified email lands a larger audience, so it becomes more popular – the open rate in the last two months has been averaging over 60 percent. If you think your friends would like what we do here, then please do recommend it to them: it is entirely and absolutely free to read. But, if you feel like getting out your wallet, and buying one of our keenly priced print magazines, then there is a link to the webstore right here.
There are only a handful of copies of Issue 9 and Issue 10 left in the world, and we only printed a thousand of each, and as the circulation for the latest iteration has tripled, you should make rapid moves to secure your archived jewel – all for the lowly cost of £6 (plus shipping).
The Fence has become a bigger beast of late, and is now available at W H Smith, and if you would like to secure a free bottle of champagne and a copy of the now sold-out Issue 8 (perhaps the best issue so far, and only 500 of them were printed) then there is a competition that you can take part in. Simply go in to your local W H Smiths – and we have a list of all the outlets at this link – and take a photo of Issue 11 and tag us on either Twitter or Instagram.
It really is that simple: have a look at this entry here from a learned professor, or this snap from a young reader here for inspiration, and you might receive a bottle of Veuve Monsigny and a copy of a magazine that had the executive leadership of Condé Nast thinking how we got away with printing Issue 8. And we’ll say no more on that particular subject.
Today, we’ve got some bits on Azealia Banks, Geoff Dyer and a tribute to Mark Rylance’s finest ever moment on stage, but we lead with a very special dispatch. If you missed it the first time around, Jack Beaumont wrote one of the star features for Issue 11, where he investigated how Prince Charles’ ‘Picking for Britain’ lockdown scheme was exploited by teenage scallywags and mercenary farmers.
Now, Jack has written a fresh piece for us, in which he profiles the man that has made trainspotting cool.
The 17.42 to Crewe
You call them train or railway enthusiasts these days. Not spotters. That term took on a pejorative effect after the success and associations of a certain Scottish artefact, which pinned itself to our cultural timetables almost thirty years ago. A whiff of playground cruelty in the air, ‘trainspotting’ became a widely understood metaphor for trivial or pointless pursuits. Six-figure collaborations with The North Face and Gucci don’t seem so trivial or pointless, however, assuming you aren’t already minted.
Francis Bourgeois: star risen. 2.3 million TikTok followers, best eyebrows in the house, brands lining up around the block to catch some shine from the meteor man, the new (indeed perhaps the only) acceptable face of train, although I suppose that depends where you stand on Michael Portillo (TikTok followers: n/a).
It’s a truth as old as tabloid (and probably as old as jealousy) that what goes up must be in receipt of backlash and, if at all possible, brought crashing down. Francis suffered an inaugural dose in December last year, when The Tab revealed his real name (Luke Nicholson). It soon came to light that he was a fan of house music, had attended at least one music festival, was on the books of Brother Models; and used to dress like a roadman, in the way that well-spoken teens going through a run-of-the-mill identity crisis so often do. According to some, this was evidence of deceit and betrayal, because true enthusiasts, apparently, either can’t or shouldn’t be doing any of that.
So far, so bullshit. I’m not exactly a fan, but none of these smears came close to muddying my view of Francis’ seemingly harmless content. The backlash did get me thinking though: if some of his own followers are this trigger happy with the muck gun, what might his fellow (or rival) train enthusiasts have to say? I went in search of comment and opinion from those inside one of the UK’s most taciturn communities.
‘I hate Francis Bourgeois,’ confides Tim, a teenaged enthusiast based on the south coast, and the first to respond to my online advances. ‘He just begs drivers for tones.’
For ‘tones’ read ‘horns’. Many of Francis’ videos feature him reacting with rhapsodic glee as passing trains blare two-note greetings. Requesting them is a bit of a faux pas for some in the scene, but why? ‘He got a driver in trouble for blowing his horn before. When they do he acts like it’s Christmas, even though he’s heard a train horn over a thousand times.’
So fellow enthusiasts aren’t keen on the giddy responses to tones. But this is what made Francis famous, and there are millions of people who can’t get enough of exactly that. I won’t be calling on him to calm it down, even if he does ham it up.
Still, concerned that train drivers might be risking their livelihoods for the shrieks of a 21-year-old, I approached a man called Michael from Lancashire, who once had the honour of tooting for Francis.
‘I gave Francis Bourgeois several tones and I’m not sure who was happier, me or him.’
Wasn’t Michael worried about the repercussions?
‘The potential to get in trouble is there, as the horn should only be used in certain situations, but I can’t see any real disciplinary action being taken because of it. Maybe an informal warning, nothing more.’
I pressed Michael for his colleagues’ thoughts on the internet star.
‘Train drivers are very archaic, the majority are over 55 years old and miserable. They don’t take kindly to people like Francis, they think he’ll cause a serious incident. There’s a few youngsters coming through now though, and most of them love him.’
The day may come when Francis is brought to trial for his role in a six-man pancake on the tracks of platform 11 at Crewe Station, but until that day we’ll presume he follows all relevant safety guidelines.
Or will we? Rhian, a follower of the steam scene, offered me this troubling insight.
‘Not long ago he caught The Flying Scotsman on top of a hill above Sapperton Railway Tunnel in the Golden Valley, near Stroud. That location used to be a popular vantage point for enthusiasts, but in the last few years the British Transport Police (BTP) have been moving people on from there, including myself, because it’s actually on the railway boundary. Yet Francis managed to get onto that location, to film the one steam locomotive most likely to get the BTP out, and he got away with it.’
Is Rhian suggesting that the BTP are in cahoots with Bourgeois, bending the rules for him and only enforcing them for the rest of us?
‘All I’ll say is that he seems to be allowed to do a lot more than dedicated, sensible rail enthusiasts, purely because of his fame. This makes us incredibly jealous.’
It must be said, if Francis has managed to sweet talk the BTP, a particularly unreasonable and draconian tendril of the law, into letting him film where he shouldn’t be, then I can only offer him my heartfelt respect. But this is, without doubt, vastly unfair on the normal, law-abiding enthusiasts. And Rhian picks up on another thing with her scan of the comments section: Bourgeois’ fans aren’t railway enthusiasts.
Jackie Weaver fans don’t like parish council meetings, Gordon Ramsay fans don’t like cooking, and Francis Bourgeois fans don’t like trains. They like the messenger, the character – or caricature – on their screens, not of their scene. And that’s absolutely fine. But, unsurprisingly, this irks those who do genuinely share a passion for the railways, because it feels like someone has taken it away, re-packaged it and fed it to the laymen for the likes, the money and the acclaim.
That’s not to say anyone bringing their particular hobbies to a wider audience is inherently self-serving (although there is serious malfeasance to be examined where Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares is concerned). This is just a fact of success. A young transport enthusiast, with the online moniker, ‘Epic Bus Guy’, put it this way:
‘He brings attention to our great hobby of trains and transportation but perhaps he's not bringing the right sort of attention. The media coverage focuses on him, not the hobby. He is probably a nice enough chap in real life but you can never tell with somebody on social media.’
Does Epic Bus Guy consider Francis sincere, at least?
‘I think he’s a fraud, but not necessarily a fraud with bad intentions. He may well have an interest in trains, but it’s not his main priority when it comes to making these videos. He seems to reinforce the negative stereotypes that hobbyists are all socially awkward, and potentially reinforces stereotypes about Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD).’
Epic Bus Guy touches on another contentious issue in the Bourgeois discourse: whether Francis is a person with ASD. It is not my business to speculate on that, but, as a person with autism, it may well be Epic Bus Guy’s, because if Francis is aping characteristics associated with a disorder it turns out he doesn’t have, then that’s not OK.
Despite plenty of people posing the question online, Bourgeois has at no point indicated whether he's got ASD himself, and we are not inclined or more importantly qualified to pursue this line of investigation.
Is he a bad bloke? Absolutely not, in my view. I don’t think he’s pretending to be autistic, I do think he really likes trains, and I’m fairly sure his main aim is to please and entertain. The harsher words offered from the enthusiasts must be seen through the lens of frustration and, in some cases, plain old jealousy. But if I was a trainspotter, and I saw the tracks of Francis’ career all laid out before him – I’d be riddled with envy, wouldn’t you?
You should follow Jack on Twitter here.
A Proud Son of the Wolds
Last week, we shared a video of Fred Dibnah summiting an overhanging chimney, erroneously terming him an ‘elderly Yorkshireman’. As many of you gleefully pointed out, Dibnah is from Bolton – which is, of course, a small village in Lincolnshire. So allow us to pay further tribute to this death-defying Yellowbelly with another clip of his exploits, as he repairs the weathercock on a rural church, climbing a 80-meter ladder while offering a perfect, homespun précis of the last millennium of English history – one that would have Christopher Hill pouring out the port at the Balliol College high table.
Out of Sheer Rage
There are whispers that old-fashioned hatchet-jobs are going out of fashion, but no one has told Vivian Gornick, who has sharpened the scalpel on Geoff Dyer for the Atlantic. It’s all been rapturously received, of course. For while Dyer’s most offerings may have been one-note of late, he’s still a supernaturally talented writer, and unlike most of the Anton Egos of the literary criticism world, he’s a great enthusiast for life, and for art. Yes, we’ve nailed our colours to the mast, we really, really like Geoff Dyer.
Here are a trio of pieces of his that might just brighten your morning. Slate have republished his classic piece on sex and hotels, and here’s his venture into Paris Fashion Week (starts at page 20) and you can finish off with this perfect pre-Guardian Long Read on his New York donut obsession. Load those links up and thank us later.
I Can’t Get with That
Cara Delevingne, the supermodel turned actress, has been back in the news, after she made what appears to be a well-refreshed pit-stop at the Billboard Awards, where she was supporting – in her own way – Megan Thee Stallion. As the awards show progressed, Delevingne jostled into a conversation with Doja Cat, which didn’t please online onlookers, or Doja Cat herself.
As the internet has raged in the last few days, unlikely support has come for Cara D in the form of Azealia Banks, who has some fascinating allegations to make about the mercurial, magical figure of Jay-Z – one of the most powerful people in contemporary culture. We will, you can be assured, be watching developments closely.
The Proof is in the Pudding
Some sad news: Stack Magazines, a distribution company that has done much to advance the cause of independent publications in all their forms, has announced that they are closing down their shop – but are thankfully continuing their subscription service.
Steve Watson, the founder and CEO, has written a long post explaining his decision, and it’s a piece that shines a light on the fiddly difficulties of running a print operation: of the Sisyphus-like admin of shuttling between stockists and publishers, and of the intransigent terms of the dreaded ‘sale or return’ that means so much stock is destroyed – a process that is ruinous to young, upstart publications like ours.
That’s why we are constantly encouraging readers to subscribe to the print magazine: it really allows us to keep expanding as the paper crisis (and cost of living crisis!) continues to bite. We’ve kept the price of annual subscription at the exceedingly generous sum of £25 for the year, as we want our high-quality journalism to be available at a cut-price entry point. So, if you value what we’ve been doing so far, please sign up today.
In Case You Missed It
Diamonds are forever – Rosa Lyster traces the history of the ultimate jewel.
Stop it with those sadfaces: Houman Barekat examines the grief memoir.
George Floyd’s death changed America, but did it change Britain too? Tomiwa Owolade takes a draft of recent history.
After VICE revealed that hard-right muckrakers The Daily Wire had pumped $50,000 into attacking Amber Heard with Facebook ads, Ryan Broderick says it reveals a further truth: Facebook is dead.
Why has Richard Coles left the Church of England? Caitlin Moran interviews the musician-turned-priest about his faith
A real golden God: Casey Cep unpicks the Western obsession with the boy king Tutankhamen.
An oldie but a goldie, this one – Michael Paterniti profiling the man with 106 kids and counting (and this was in 2015).
And Finally
More than a few famous people walk past our HQ on Archer Street: just a fortnight ago we saw Jay Rayner shuffle past with a selection of comestibles packed in a plastic bag. And we occasionally get a glimpse of celebrity in its purest, unadorned form. Last Wednesday, we saw Sir Mark Rylance shuffle past with a selection of comestibles packed in a tote bag. Needless to say, it’s these sorts of things that make working in Soho all worthwhile.
Sir Mark, who was wearing a rather fetching pair of shorts, is performing a revival of Jez Butterworth’s Jerusalem around the corner – the critics reckon it’s the finest play of the 21st century – and that it might well be. But the best theatrical clip of the century comes, without a hint of a shadow of a doubt, courtesy of Rylance, when he finished his performance of Richard II at The Globe with such an exuberant jig that the commentator – the normally sober Andrew Marr – sounds like he has just snorted a line of speed straight off the program notes. Here it is: it’s one for the ages.
*
That’s the lot for this week, and if you’d like to chat to a member of the team about this newsletter, the status of your subscription or the state of the world at large, then do reply to this email and we’ll come back to you straight away.
We’ll join you in the usual Monday time slot with a suitably patriotic mail-out next time around. Until then.
All the best,
TF
We are also delighted to offer a subscription service. For £25 you will receive all four copies of the magazine per year, delivered to your door.
