Dear Readers,
Good afternoon, and welcome to Off The Fence, a newsletter now firmly in advanced age. Today marks our 80th outing, and it’s been a real pleasure putting this mail-out together over the last couple of years. Unfortunately, Issue 12 has now sold out, but we have an offer for the slackers at the back. If you subscribe today, you’ll receive a complimentary copy of Issue 12 as a digital pdf, and you’ll also receive a free copy of Issue 11 to go along with a year’s subscription. Six magazines for the price of four: we are, quite literally, giving it away. This deal will expire very, very soon, so do move quickly to the webstore and sign up today.
We’ve got some real treats in store for you, but to start things off, a dispatch from Edinburgh from Anna Aslanyan.
Flyering on the Mile
The Fringe turns 75 this year. It has grown into the largest art event in the world since 1947, when eight collectives came uninvited to the just-founded Edinburgh International Festival. What’s behind this success story? Dominic Frisby, a one-time Fringe performer, offers an answer in the form of Adam Smith: Father of the Fringe, a documentary providing a ‘quick refresher’ of the philosopher’s life and work. Frisby claims that because Adam Smith gave free lectures and then passed around a donation tin, he invented the pay-what-you-can model. Those familiar with The Wealth of Nations shouldn’t be surprised that the Fringe, a ‘microcosm of a market-driven society’, leaves many in the red. There is no artistic selection here, but the invisible hand will sift through rubbish to pick up a new Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead. The premiere of Tom Stoppard’s play at the Fringe in 1966 made him famous overnight. Frisby’s interviewees mostly repeat after Stoppard, less eloquently and in reference to the festival’s vicissitudes, ‘Life is a gamble, at terrible odds – if it was a bet you wouldn’t take it.’
Emotionally and intellectually, we may not have changed since the birth of economics, but our habits have. Rather than passing a tin around, performers now wait at the door with a card reader; they still use flyers but increasingly rely on TikTok. One thing missing from this year’s Fringe is an app that would allow punters to find shows nearby and buy tickets. The organisers said they ‘simply did not have the budget’ for it. The comedian Rachel Jackson expressed general disappointment when she responded, ‘Let’s say there are 3,000 shows on, and we’ve all had to pay £400 for registration. That’s £1.2m. Why are you pleading poverty?’ Equity is now calling for artists to have their registration fees refunded.
For some participants, the app fiasco proved to be the last drop. It’s traditional to moan about the cost of the Fringe, but this year has been especially hard. Accommodation prices have gone through the roof, indicating either post-pandemic revival or late capitalist reality. After the screening of Adam Smith, people remarked that the free market is not the only way for art to go, suggesting that the University of Edinburgh, the main beneficiary of the Fringe, could do more for the festival than simply charging exorbitant sums for rooms. Landlords, venues and PR companies all take their share, making the cost of a typical show reach £20,000. Few people break even; many incur epic losses. Beyond the Free Fringe, tickets are £10–£14 and have to be printed out more often than necessary.
The Fringe has always been about satire. Today it has Boris Johnson in its sights. It’s not known whether Boris Live at Five and suchlike were initially designed to bring about Johnson’s downfall or merely to facilitate it. Boris the Third, written and directed by Adam Meggido, is one of the works drawing on the outgoing PM’s comic capital. Harry Kershaw, sporting a white wig, plays a teenage Johnson cast in a doomed Eton production of Richard III. ‘I give you all my complete assurance’ and ‘I wasn’t aware that was a party’ are among his funnier lines. ‘Being memorable is better than being boring’, on the other hand, makes you wonder whether the play is destined to outlast Johnson.
Overlapping with these takes on politics is another burning issue: toxic masculinity. The acts attempting to expose it include Sugarcoated Sisters, a cabaret duo whose refrains range from ‘I’m negging you’ to ‘Floppy dick pic’. Musical comedy is a curious thing: there is always a chance that someone will say, with a voice like that, you could do with snappier gags. Gender and power dynamics are done much better through straight-up theatre in Masterclass, presented by Brokentalkers and Adrienne Truscott. She and Feidlim Cannon are brilliant throughout the farce, which begins as a caricature of an ‘American misanthrope par excellence’ – a playwright with a penchant for violence ‘against female characters, not female women’ – and ends with two incarnations of ‘the perennial Mr Nasty’ refusing to leave until everyone else is gone.
If doing a show on a shoestring is a challenge, overfunding has its own dangers. The Last Return, Sonya Kelly’s play directed by Sara Joyce, potentially a gem of Stoppardian absurdism, appears to have been inflated into a homily that milks refugees for feels. Back to stand-up, the Fringe has long been home to the comedian inviting the audience to rate their jokes, so that at least one person can get their money’s worth. But still, as always, there is much to enjoy. Susie McCabe, a ‘lapsed Catholic, practising homosexual’, riffs on ‘home and away’ hen dos, Parker pens and ‘me Greta Thunberg’. Vladimir McTavish also mentions the activist in his set, in a gag based on googling ‘16-year-old Swedish schoolgirl’. Kai Samra’s material includes the story of his granddad chasing skinheads down the road with a slipper. When the artist himself was attacked by racists, ‘I did exactly the same: I wrote about them for the Guardian.’
Running through all this fun is a show within a show, in which the market forces chase the Fringe round the stage. Imagine the sacrifices you make to bring your work to Edinburgh: borrow money, live off Tesco meal deals, share a bed with your stage manager, shiver in the rain or, for a brief spell this month, sweat in the heat. You know you’re doing it to fight Boris Johnson, inequality and, ultimately, capitalism. And then you realise that the invisible hand has been manipulating you all along, using your art to confirm a theory conceived two and a half centuries ago by an Oxford graduate in a wig.
Anna Aslanyan is the author of Dancing on Ropes: Translators and the Balance of History.
King of the Castle
Before the Fringe became overwhelmed by clenchingly unfunny comedy shows and TV executives scouting the next Jack Whitehall, it was a place of avant-garde experimentation to complement the official festival. At the grand old age of 92, the Scots-Italian impresario Richard Demarco has watched it all happen (quite literally: he has contributed to every festival – every single one – since its inception in 1947).
There is a wonderful documentary celebrating his life on iPlayer that we strongly recommend you find the time to watch. Marina Abramović recounts her time as an Edinburgh postie; Jimmy Boyle remembers how Demarco sparked his creative impulses at HMP Bairlinnie’s segregated unit – and there’s a fascinating segment about Joseph Beuys’ first trip to the Highlands.
Demarco, still avuncular, still producing shows, pours occasional scorn on the Fringe he helped birth – he recently told festival chiefs that they need to ‘drop their obsession with August’. Regardless, this is a fantastic programme about a man whose life should be more widely known. It’s available here.
The Stroke Horses, Don’t They?
Did you know that equine semen is the most valuable liquid in the world? If you didn’t, now you do. If you’d like to know more about how it’s bartered, traded and sold – and, yes, how it’s produced – then you should read Isobel Thompson’s superb deep-dive into this lucrative, curious world. Interestingly enough, scorpion venom would be even more expensive – if only the men in white coats could work out a way of producing it at volume… you learn something new every day.
Sorted for Cheese and Dips
Clive Martin’s Big Night Out series was a big inspiration to us all at The Fence, so we’re proud as punch to have him write for the most recent issue, and which he went on a Big Weekend Out (of sorts), looking at the proliferation of ‘the great bluetick roadshows’ that are KITE festival, Latitude, Wilderness and so on. It’s one of the funniest things we’ve ever published, and if you haven’t tucked into it already, then you can do so here.
Take the Money and Run
If you’re new to The Fence, and you’re wondering whether you should subscribe, then you should firstly take heed of the digital deal that we mention up top, then you should place a glance at these quote-garlands that have been bestowed on us by Graydon Carter, the merry men at Viz, and the miscellanist and author, Ben Schott. It’s a real thrill to have the very people whose books and magazines inspired us to start up our own publication, but we do need people to keep paying the very agreeable sum of £25 for the year so we can keep growing the project at a decent pace. So if you would like two free magazines, please do subscribe today – and if you have already done so, why not share our campaign – we would love to score another 30 subscriptions for the month: a plum, round and approachable goal.
Roy of the Rovers
Roy Strong the legendary art historian served as the director of the V & A and the National Portrait Gallery, and is still going strong (sorry) today, as he celebrates his 87th birthday. How does he keep so trim? Well, the author of the The Renaissance Garden in England has an unlikely hobby: he likes to pump iron, as you can see in this testimonial for Ady Watts, a Hereford-based personal trainer.
While Sir Roy is focusing on the here and now, he’s also got an eye on his legacy – as was vividly displayed when he threatened to burn down the gardens he had spent 40 years creating after the National Trust refused to accept them as a gift. (You can pair the video above with this gloriously bitchy interview he made at the time).
It’s fair to say that we would like more material on Sir Roy. If you’ve had a memorable encounter with him, or if you’ve got one of his famously catty diaries to hand, then we would like to hear from you.
In Case You Missed It
Few reviewers could get away with writing a long, long, LONG review of two books, which mentions one only parenthetically and another not at all since, as he freely admits, he refused to read it. In this extraordinary piece for the Quietus, the legendary Bill Drummond proves he is very much among those few. (For the record, the neglected author agrees).
Rory Carroll charts the fortunes and failings of the Hare Krishnas’ Irish island.
You can set your clocks for when this will be made into a miniseries: Lili Anolik delves into the unlikely and uneasy relationship of Joan Didion and Eve Babitz.
In the best possible taste: an interview with the legendary decorator and dealer, Robert Kime, who sadly died this week.
Karen Weise goes over the sordid details of Dan Price’s litany of abuses, as ‘America’s most moral CEO’ is revealed to be anything but..
Aztec on 00 Agent: Simon Parkin gives you an insider take on the making of Goldeneye 007, the unlikely gaming blockbuster made for a pittance in a Leicestershire barn.
Friend of the mag, John Saward reports from Alaska to tell us we don’t deserve these bears.
This week, the free lunch editor, Ed Cumming, was relieved of his laptop, but retained his appetite for sweet, sweet content.
And Finally
Last Friday, Marina Hyde filed a typically witty piece on Brooklyn Beckham, who at the age of 23, is trying to make it as a chef, having already tried to be a footballer, like his father, and then there was a detour into photography, which yielded one particularly memorable book.
According to certain people who spend too much time on the internet, Brooklyn is not a fair target, as he is just starting to make his way in life (though some might say as the scion of one of the biggest forces in British cultural life, he certainly is ripe for plucking).
Anyway, you can make your minds up for yourself in this video here, in which Brooklyn attempts to make a British breakfast sandwich on an American breakfast TV show. In the same way that students today study the Rococo fashionings of Fragonard and Boucher so as to better understand the cultural forces that encouraged the French Revolution; so you might imagine that young scholars in the year 2422 might watch Brooklyn Beckham assembling a sandwich so as to better understand the cultural forces of our unfortunate present age.
*
On that note, that’s the lot for this week – if you’ve got any comments, notes, complaints or postal queries, then do reply to this email, and we’ll get back to you promptly. And remember: the digital deal will expire very soon, and there’s a link just below. We’ll join you next week. 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.
