Dear Readers,
Good afternoon, and welcome to Off The Fence, a newsletter that sometimes arrives on Mondays, and sometimes arrives on a Tuesday. Today is one of those days when it arrives on a Tuesday – we have been finessing the summer issue for an early July launch.
Until tomorrow, we’re running a competition. You simply need to go into a branch of WH Smith (stockist list attached) and take a photograph of Issue 11 on the shelves and tag us on our social media accounts. Here are some entries to give you an idea of how easy it is: one from Wales, a snap from a proud mother in south London and a clerical entry from Cambridge.
The winner will receive a copy of Issue 8 – the very last copy in existence, it’s now completely sold-out – and also a bottle of Champagne. Happy hunting!
Today, we’ve got some artworld intrigue and real-world intrigue and we end with some really very, very funny clips from the world of fashion, which we hope you enjoy.
On the Trail of Stingeldamus
So then. Inigo Philbrick – what a name, and what a story. It seems that every feature writer from Tufnell Park to Cobble Hill has written a piece about the convicted fraudster who looks eerily like Justin Timberlake’s younger brother. And they all follow something of the same narrative: the early investment from Jay Jopling, the great deals on multi-million pound artworks by Christopher Wool and Rudolf Stingel; the neon-smudged nights on £5,000 bottles of Bordeaux, the relationship with the reality TV star, Victoria Baker-Harber; then the flight to Vanuatu, and the final photo of Philbrick, being led away from Pacific paradise in a pair of bermuda shorts – back to justice in an American courthouse.
If you’re new to Inigo’s adventures, then the best place to start is this article by David Jenkins, which suggests that Kenny Schachter wasn’t the only powerful enemy Philbrick made. But a few outstanding questions remain. How did the baby-faced dealer get away with it for so long? Were any other galleries or individuals part of his conspiracies? And why has London become the global hub for art advisory firms? It’s an opaque world, all centred in Mayfair, and it is magnificently challenging for any journalist to penetrate. We look forward to seeing someone try.
The Trans-Pennine Express
Over the last two newsletters we’ve hailed the televisual genius of Fred Dibnah – and outraged a couple of Lancastrians along the way. And what with all this inflation, various energy crises and the looming promise of the return of the imperial measurement system, it is fitting to celebrate another broadcasting magus from the 1970s: Ian Nairn. Perhaps known better as a writer, his book on London – Nairn’s London – is usually regarded as the best short work of non-fiction on the capital, and his TV series, Nairn Across Britain, has the same democratic, passionate and witty approach to architecture and people – there’s three shortish episodes and if you forgive the characteristically ornate introduction from Jonathan Meades, then you have a very solid evening’s entertainment lined up before you. It’s available on iPlayer here.
All the Tsars Are Here
In Issue 11, the deputy editor Kieran Morris tabulated all the Blair/ Cameron-era business ‘leaders’ who were brought in by the government as ‘tsars’. The list got so long that we had to place it into a quite beautiful venn diagram that is now available to enjoy online here. Though the outstanding question remains: where is the 5000-word feature on Louise Casey, the many-starred tsar of 21st century Britain?
The King in the North
In a fascinating piece, Dan Jackson writes of how the great feudal Northumbrian families maintain their power today, and suggests that the Saudi Arabian takeover of Newcastle FC was foreshadowed by the 2011 marriage of Lucy Cuthbert, a scion of two great county families, to Khalid bin Bandar al Saud – who was made ambassador the United Kingdom in 2019. Yes, plutocracy meets aristocracy and all that, but it’s also the perfect excuse to dig up Davey Jones’ comic strip from Issue 10, in which Kevin Keegan and Prince Mohammed Bin Salman head out for ‘A Night on the Toon.’
Down and Out on the Bowery
If you want to feel old, and not ‘with it’, then you should read Will Harrison’s piece about his life in downtown Manhattan, in the area of Chinatown people are referring to as ‘Dimes Square’. The piece itself is not particularly interesting – but the background to it is. Nick Burns reports on a cultural schism in New York, between progressive Brooklynites and a ‘transgressive’ scene in Manhattan, who have grown tired of the sanctimony of the ‘woke’ left. The Fence’s New York correspondent – who funnily enough lives in Chinatown – affirms that there is some aspect of truth to this. They relay the following:
‘A lot of people I know in their 20s who are cool and in the arts are not necessarily fully-fledged right-wingers, but they think the standard millennial liberal is a complete moron. They embrace a kind of humour that revels in making jokes about things that are extremely politically incorrect. It’s an odd combination: you’re talking about people who are younger than you, but who are making jokes exactly like a provocative dad at a party.’
Which sounds pretty terrifying, to be honest. Interestingly enough, as all of this chatter has been dissected across the Atlantic, some onlookers have declaimed that ‘Europeans’ are obsessed with New York. Might it be that ‘Europeans’ are astonished that the city that birthed punk music, disco and hip-hop in the space of five years, now, 40 years later, is offering elite media discourse as its prime cultural offering? Who knows. In any case, readers based in New York can now buy Issue 11 – a handful of copies are available at Soho News International on Prince and Sullivan.
Crystal Palace
Next week, we’re going to be reopening submissions, hopefully on a permanent basis, and we’ll have a new and updated pitch guide too. While there’s still going to be our classique blend of short fiction, long reads and asinine listicles, we’re super interested in pieces that explain how industries work, whether on a reported or an ‘insider’ basis. We’ve been lucky to publish a few of them already – this piece from an anonymous BBC staffer is perhaps the exemplar.
Vauxhall’s Finest
Christopher Steele – he of the infamous dossier – has recently announced that Vladimir Putin is ‘increasingly ill’ and accompanied around by a ‘team of doctors’. To which we ask, how do you know that, Christopher? Are you in Moscow? Steele, who left MI6 in 2009, isn’t the only person flaunting their (former) connections to the secret services.
Christine Hart is a Twickenham-based psychic, detective and healer, who offers ‘energy readings’ and ‘core reconnections’ for £45 per hour. The testimonial page contains, however some deeply incongruous names – Rebekah Brooks, Clive Goodman and Ian Cobain. That’s because Christine Hart is one of the top private investigators in the country, and has worked for all the major newspapers – and she allegedly blagged the medical records of Sienna Miller, leading to a multi-million pound settlement in December last year.
On her website for her company, Mara Intelligence, Hart advertises that she works for ‘ex-MI5 and MI6-run agencies’ when she was starting out as investigator. Back then, one of her bosses was Michael Oatley, who, under the codename ‘Mountain Climber’, established the back-channel between the IRA and the UK government that was perhaps the most important factor in the resolution of the Troubles.
How’s that for a snapshot of modern Britain?
In Case You Missed It
Why are labels pressurising megawatt female artists into making pointless TikToks? Rebecca Lucy Taylor, who performs as the artist Self Esteem, suggests a few reasons why.
One from 2017, but it’s just the sort of thing we’re looking to publish in 2022 – Simon Akam tracks the amazingly lucrative yet astonishingly antiquated world inhabited by barristers’ clerks in London.
With two new books from Tina Brown and Robert Hardman hitting the shelves, Nicola Shulman reviews the royal reality show.
‘The best bargain in the history of law enforcement’ – Catherine Rentz investigates the cost of not testing backlogged rape kits.
An absolute marmalade-dropper, and a story that’s taken 40 years to be told: the plot to ‘out’ Ronald Reagan.
And Finally
At the recent graduate show for Central Saint Martins, the elegant garms were abutted by the presence by a couple of human cuboid QR codes shuffling down the catwalk. While it may be easy to laugh, you might, perhaps, say that it’s a rather clever critique of consumer capitalism.
It did however inspire us to ask some fashionista friends what the most bonkers display they’ve ever seen, and we were deluged by clips of bizarre excess. While Art School finished their SS19 show with some of their models intermittently falling over and walking on their hands and knees, the clear winner was the AW18 Rottingdean Bazaar show, which should be understood less as a fashion show, and more as a full-throated cavalry charge against the forces of sanity. When you see the fourth model amble down with a wooden sign bearing the legend ‘personalized cheese boards’ pinned to their chest – then you know you’re in for something special.
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That’s the lot for this week, and if you’d like to chat shop with a member of the editorial staff, then reply to this email and we’ll get back to you shortly. And if you’ve been enjoying these newsletters, why not subscribe to the print magazine at the link below? We’ll join you early next week. Until then.
All the best,
TF
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