Dear Readers,
We’re delighted to announce that Issue 12 has landed on doormats as this newsletter lands in your inbox – what a pleasing admixture of the digital and print spheres – and we would love it if were to share some photos on social media, either on Twitter here, or on its fancier cousin, Instagram.
So far, we’ve had some snaps from a number of admirers, contributors and subscribers, including Ian Leslie, Josh Mcloughlin, Sejal Sukhadwala and the good Dr Dennis Duncan.
Join the roll of honour and load up a snap of your favourite bits – we spent three months putting this issue together, and it really does make our contributors, illustrators and editorial team pleased as punch to see it celebrated.
This time around, there are fewer copies available through the webstore. At the current rate of sales, the issue is going to be sold out very soon indeed. To secure your copy, hit up this link right here and it will be dispatched to you promptly.
We’ve got some select morsels for you today, and we kick off with something that has marvelled us for some time: the Rhyme of the Ancient Illustrator.
A Portrait in Pen and Ink
Sir Quintin Blake is still pumping out sketches in his 90th year. Raymond ‘The Snowman’ Briggs, patron of the Association of Illustrators, is 88 years old. The Spectator’s Michael Heath, who works on the magazine every week, is 87 in October. Ralph Steadman, famed for his collaboration and correspondence with Hunter S Thompson, turned 86 in May. Stanley ‘Mac’ McMurtry was born 11 days before him, and worked for DMGT for 50 years – courting controversy as he went before ‘retiring’ in 2018 – only to rejoin the Mail on Sunday two years later. Tony Ross is the baby of the group: he turns 84 in nine days, but he is still astonishingly prolific, and was, until recently, the biggest-selling illustrator in the country.
While it’s heartening to see these wrinkly doodlers cheat Time, we can only wonder has there ever been – in the field of human endeavour – such an eminent gerontocracy? Please do let us know.
Lords of Dogtown
As we ready ourselves for the Queen’s departure from the world stage, Francis Martin has a modest proposal to ensure that the Crown continues into this century and beyond. His suggestion is that we put a four-legged friend on the throne – a development that could really boost tourism, and will, Francis believes, put much less stress on the public purse (minus the odd expense for doggie treats etc.)
Stuck on the Zip Line
It’s been ten years and three days since the London 2012 Olympics Opening Ceremony, where Danny Boyle and Frank Cottrell-Boyce dazzled billions with a four-hour extravaganza, setting the tone for two weeks of games that brought great joy to Britain, hinting at a new golden age for the country – a suggestion that the events of the last five years have made a mockery of.
(Please, if you will, read this sentence in an Adam Curtis voice) But was the dawn of a new Elizabethan age a sign, taken as a wonder, or was it all a fantasy? In a piece written with vigour and brio, Rich Woodall looks at the state of the country a decade ago, when the Chipping Norton set loomed large in the public imagination.
Masters of Ceremony
But what if Danny Boyle couldn’t make it? What if another director helmed the ceremony? We had a lot of fun putting this slice of silliness together – there are about 101 iterations of the Richard Curtis version, each more hideous to the mind’s eye than the last.
Sizzla!
After Giles Coren’s defenestration at the BBC, we decided to republish Secret Chef’s review of the intemperate Times’ critic, and it proved something of a hit online. If you’re new to The Fence, then you may have missed one of our most popular series: we hired a Michelin-starred restaurateur to review the critics, turning the tables on the poison pens of the fourth estate. The trilogy is available for a short while online, and then we’re going to put them back in the archive, so do read them while you can.
His first assignment was Jay Rayner – and Secret Chef really didn’t hold back here, but our anonymous cook lavished a stream of praise on Marina O’Loughlin – crowning her the finest critic in the land. Secret Chef has put his apron back on and has put the typewriter down – for now. But we might call on him again…
Islands in the Revenue Stream
One of the problems with doing this sort of no-holds barred journalism on prominent journalists is that we get intermittent spasms of praise from the Centrist Dad mafia that still, for some reason, hold undue sway in the British mediascape. (They just read all our pieces online, for free).
That’s why we need you – our readers – to circumvent the blue-tick powerbrokers and sign up to the print magazine. As costs rise elsewhere, we’re holding fast: we offer a year’s subscription at the bafflingly low sum of £25 for the year, which if you think about it, really isn’t that much at all for four magazines and 50 newsletters p/a. So, if you value what we do, please do subscribe today.
Did Russ in Cheshire kill Bernard Cribbins?
Like many across the country, we have been mourning the late, great Bernard Cribbins this week. We particularly regret to inform readers that Fence unfavourite, Twitter’s ‘Russ In Cheshire’ tweeted a gif of Cribbins on 13 July, in one of his many tweets thanking people for sending him vast sums of cash to fight a possibly fictitious legal battle (see Off The Fence #74, the Tory Leadership Special, for more details). Of course, we would never suggest that the shame of this association killed Mr Cribbins and would prefer to remember the great man by sharing his star turn as Gertrude Stein (alongside Wilfred Brambell of Steptoe and Son as Alice Toklas). Cribbins was also responsible for this exceptional joke, delivered backstage during the filming of Dr Who:
‘A door-to-door salesman is working one day and he goes up to a very big house in a posh neighborhood and knocks on the door. After a moment, the door opens, and standing there is a little boy of no more than five years old. In one hand he has a large glass of brandy and in his mouth is an enormous cigar. The salesman, a little taken aback, asks; ‘’Hello little boy, are your mummy or daddy home?’
The child removes the cigar and says; ‘Does it fucking look like they are?’
In Case You Missed It
Jeff Maysh talks to the Erotic dancer who spent five years taking down America’s most wanted domestic terror cell.
Jazz Pianist Charles Cornell uses music science to confirm that which we’ve long known to be true: the theme to Thomas the Tank Engine absolutely rips.
For the LRB, William Davies discusses the seductions of declinism, and the realities of stagnation.
Kimberley Bond charts the rise and fall of competing fast-fashion behemoths
A story to relish in Nikhita Venugopol’s probing and fascinating tale of ketchup’s attemptz to invade India, for FiftyTwo.
And Finally
As soft spots for a bit of archival footage go, we sport a fairly impressive tog rate. Not least when it comes to those clips which braid themselves so neatly to our current day preoccupations. As such we were inordinately charmed by this breezily odd little BBC Sheffield vox pop from 1959, on the evergreen topic of anxiety.
In it, reporter John Morgan – sporting an accent so outlandishly, geometrically posh, every vowel sounds cut from stained glass – asks one simple and profound question: ‘Are you worried about anything in your life?’. His respondents, employing their best phone voices to a man, give a variety of answers; the price of butter and water shortages get a mention, as do the overfunding of education, the existence of Welsh holidays, and the absence of God in the calculus of the modern man.
But first among all these interlocutors is the young gentleman presumably a visiting southerner, who says he’s worried about his ‘bird’, prompting an exquisitely confused reply from Mr Morgan which is worth the price of admission by itself.
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That’s it for this week, and we look forward to joining you again soon. Do let us know how you find the latest issue, as we said up top, it’s the product of many hands and a few months of labour, and we’re always very keen to hear from our readers. Just reply to this email and we’ll get back to you. Until the next time.
All the best,
TF
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