Dear Readers,
Good afternoon, and we hope you’re staying cool. Owing to the apocalyptic heat, the magazines have been delayed at the border, and will be arriving from the printers tomorrow – so we will launch Issue 12 on Wednesday. If you would like to change your address or check the status of your order, please reply to this email ASAP and we will amend your details before your copies are dispatched. Final countdown, last chance saloon etc. etc.
It’s also the penultimate day to score a rare jewel of a deal: subscribe to the magazine right now, and you’ll get Issue 11 and Issue 12 immediately – and the three issues after that. Five mags for the price of four, all at £25 for the year, a nifty little offer you will admit.
Enough shop talk. As the Tory leadership candidates have duked it out on television screens, we’ve been speaking to former colleagues of Tom Tugendhat and Kemi Badenoch to find out more about this curious pair of Downing Street hopefuls.
Kemi at the Speccy
If you thought that Boris Johnson was going to be the Spectator's last Prime Minister, then think again: Kemi Badenoch worked at the Conservative Party's journal of ideas from 2015 to 2016, which is a fascinatingly short stint. Intrigued by this, we asked a number of her former co-workers about her tenure at Old Queen Street, where she worked as a digital director.
She was 'unbelievably crap' according to one source, who relays that she was inefficient and idle, who struggled with organisation, loudly declaring that tasks were her 'top priority, my top priority', before leaving them unfinished at the end of the week.
She would make bizarre non-sequiturs in meetings, saying that 'the Spectator is a shop, and the editorial team are the shop window', and advertise that she spent a lot of time on the 'message boards'. She also, in one source's telling, would announce that 'there is no one more right-wing than me' to her colleagues at the magazine.
Leaving in 2016 to focus on her nascent political career, she maintains friendships with Fraser Nelson and Andrew Neil, but operated a 'kiss-up, kick-down' policy, and was apparently combative and rude to her junior staff.
All the sources we spoke to are astonished that she is being spoken about as a potential Prime Minister. So what does Michael Gove see in her?
Who Dares Kills
Last week – not for the first time; not for the last time – Panorama broke the story of SAS squads carrying out extrajudicial assassinations and executions in the line of duty, after investigating 54 suspicious deaths attributed to the service while touring Afghanistan. When this scandal last arose a couple of years ago, again in reference to 33 suspicious deaths in Afghanistan, we were able to platform the insight of a 20-year military veteran who detailed precisely why the Special Air Service are able to act with near-impunity at home & abroad. The BBCs exposé gave this older story of ours a second life, being featured in the Guardian’s First Edition newsletter – something we’re appreciative of, while mindful that it remains a deep shame that just a few years after the last ‘root-and-branch review’ of our foreign adventurism, we’ve ended up in the same place all over again.
Frankly My Dear, It’s Not Riverdance
After over four years on the proverbial shelf, the last great white whale of Irish cinema finally flumped and burped onto the shores of film discourse last week, as WildCard Distribution announced that BLACKBIRD (2018), Michael Flatley’s self-funded self-directed self-starring spy caper, will finally see release this year, and have even released a trailer that we very strongly recommend you watch now. While it owed its cult status to a tight circle of film fans, Flatley fans and Cronenbergian car-crash lovers, few people really knew the whole deal behind BLACKBIRD’s production, with fewer still having already seen it. That is, of course, unless you’d read Luke Dunne’s uproariously funny history of BLACKBIRD in issue 11 of The Fence. Read it, digest it, and get in the queues for the grand premiere: You were only waiting for this moment to arise.
On Her Majesty’s Secret Service
Lashkar Gah, the capital of Helmand Province in Afghanistan was the focus of NATO’s reconstruction efforts in the region, and a little more than a decade ago, a friend of The Fence found themselves in continuous interaction with Tom Tugendhat, who was then working as an advisor to the new governor of the province.
In a warzone, and with temperatures regularly breaking above 45 degrees, Tugendhat stood out from the crowd: he would pair combat fatigues with a tweed jacket. During our source’s’ first operational meeting with the Territorial Army major, Tugendhat purred that he worked in ‘intelligence’ before announcing that he was descended from Queen Isabelle of France (a subject not strictly necessary to reconfiguring the water supply in Helmand).
Needless to say, Tugendhat’s patrician airs did not endear him to his brothers-in-arms, and our friend was fascinated to see that the Member for Tonbridge and Malling donned an SBS tie for the most recent television debate, suggesting that Tugendhat was not badged into the Special Boat Service, and that while he may have done some patrols with them, the tie was likely a formal gift, and that he should take pride in serving with his own unit: the Territorial Army.
They’re Repossessing My Tesla!
When is a fighting fund not a fighting fund? When it’s renowned Cestrian blowhard Russell Jones, known more commonly as @RussInCheshire, hoovering thousands from the country’s most credulous to settle a spat with the MP for Bassetlaw. Yes, nobody’s favourite Twitter-threader got out his begging bowl asking his followers for £6500 to prevent a lawsuit – not even to resolve one – after erroneously accusing Brendan Clarke-Smith of having broken lockdown laws.
In return, he got nearly £20,000, making public defamation one of the most lucrative projects a freelancer can undertake in the current UK media sphere. Aside from members of the RussInCheshire-verse (of which there seems to be way, way too many), people were quick to highlight that Jones was more than capable of buying a Tesla a few months ago; others resurfaced his earlier online guise, as author of possibly the most toe-curlingly unpleasant sex blog committed to pixels – you can search for it but we’re not linking it here, you might be having your dinner.
For what it’s worth, Mr InCheshire has insisted that he will be returning the surplus to the Trussell Trust, now that he has enough wonga to keep the court summons at bay; news of this seemed to spur on a few of his donors when he had long since passed his benchmark, which makes you wonder why they didn’t just cut out the middle man and put their money towards something useful in the first place. You can be rest assured that we will be watching Mr InCheshire closely for the next few months.
In Case You Missed It
Bloomberg’s Matt Levine chimes in with this head-scratching breakdown of how the market bends itself to breaking point for the world’s biggest nickel baron.
Joshua Hunt pens an op-ed for the New York Times on how the cruelty of poverty begat a cycle of dishonesty.
Jay Rayner goes studs-in on ‘dismal’ and ‘weird’ Mayfair cash-trap Il Borro, with a proper, honest-to-God Sunday mag pasting.
What does it take to survive in the Alaskan bush? According to Eater’s Bree Kessler, more food prep planning than you might think.
The haves and have-yachts: Evan Osnos scores the story that all top-tier journalists have been itching to land – why are the super-rich buying megayachts in record numbers?
And Finally
Food Network fans of a certain vintage will remember the inimitable Southern belle herself, Paula Deen, but for the uninitiated, we insist you have to watch her. Cooking with a reckless disregard for arterial plaque buildup, Deen shot to popularity in the 2000s with such homespun creations as fried cheesecake and lasagne sandwiches – food as voluntary self-destruction, served on gingham print tables to guys called Troy.
Her mainstream success came tumbling down in 2013 when Lisa Jackson, who worked at Deen’s restaurant in Savannah, Georgia, recounted several instances of Deen using derogatory epithets towards African-Americans, even going as far as to ponder hosting a ‘plantation-themed’ wedding where the all-white guests could be served by tuxedoed black waiters. Deen promptly lost the myriad sponsorships and TV deals she had cultivated, but just like Chuck Norris jokes and increased defence spending, she is back with a vengeance, having joined the cast of Masterchef US in 2021; who was it who said there are no second acts in American life?
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Phew! That’s it for this week, and even the mere act of composing this week’s newsletter in this all-smothering heat has been more than enough of a day’s work. That being said, if you want to email us back with anything, literally anything on your mind right now, we’re on hand night and day, baking along with you as we all pray that the sun god turns down the temperature dial soon. Have a great week, drink lots of water, and we’ll catch you again next Monday. And remember that deal – there’s a link just below. Until then.
All the best,
TF
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