Dear Readers,
Good morning, and welcome to Off The Fence, a weekly newsletter that is almost free to produce and distribute and accompanies a quarterly print magazine that is starting to cost really quite a lot to produce and distribute. Some detail on this front: we’ve been whacked with increases in posting and printing charges that are only going to rise from here on in.
What this means is that we’re going to put up the annual cost of a subscription pretty soon. At the time of writing, it only costs £25 to subscribe for the year, so you can save yourself at least a fiver by signing up today, and, because we’re generous people, we’ll throw in a free PDF of the sold-out Issue 12. Follow the link right here and sign up today. (And because we really are good sorts – the type of magazine you’d bring home to meet your mother – we’ll also give everyone who subscribes today a complimentary copy of Issue 11 as well.)
In the meantime, this week’s iteration is loaded with goodies on Joan Collins, J.W Anderson and more. But first up, here’s a slice of pie.
Robert A. Taft Wasn’t That Daft
Jonathan Pie is a character played by an actor by the name of Tom Walker, and the diatribe-laden monologues that he produces on the Issues of Today are, as our features editor has it, ‘comedy for people who list themselves as Jedi on the census.’
Russia Today – of Kremlin sponsorship fame – gave J. Pie his first shot at the bigtime, and, funnily enough, the character has been given a second lease of life by possibly the best-regarded media organisation on the planet, the old Grey Lady herself: the New York Times.
With characteristically humour-free brio, Walker/Pie has filed a video for the NYT’s opinion desk on the unlikely ascension of Liz Truss, which we (very reluctantly) link here.
This isn’t Walker’s/Pie’s first rodeo for the free-spending denizens of 620 8th Avenue, and the piece has united some unlikely corners of the British mediascape to ask: who exactly is this piece for? Pie’s unlikely commission baffles the young and with-it types on the left, and outrages the right-wing establishment who regard the NYT as riven with crass Anglophobia, as demonstrated by this peerlessly furious article by Andrew Neil.
Based on conversations with those familiar with the company, we are told that the NYT has extraordinarily sophisticated audience development tools that are able to go far beyond tracking user data to see what articles are driving digital subscriptions – and are, we are told, able to recommend content to the editorial team on a regional basis in their plan to score 10 million digital subscriptions by 2025.
Jonathan Pie’s key audience is the FBPE cohort: the wealthy Remainer voters outraged by Brexit. You know the types: the ones who raised £1 million to develop Alistair Campbell’s newspaper. The people who made ‘Lions Led by Donkeys the biggest crowdfunder in British political history. The sage investors who gave Fence unfavourite Russ-in-Cheshire almost £20,000 after he libelled a Tory MP. In short: these are people who a) regard political analysis as a blunt object and b) are loaded.
The genius of the whole strategy is this: the British right-wing journalists fulminating against the NYT are providing free advertising for precisely the British audience the NYT are trying to catch. And, across the political aisle, no young British freelancer would denounce the NYT for its vapid and lame taste as scoring commissions from the NYT is one of the few available routes to financial security for a young British freelancer.
Enough talk about cultural imperialism and media hegemony. Sometimes you’ve just got to say: bravo l’artiste!
Sorry Sir, I Forgot My Pencil Case
There’s more consternation in the art world, as the 23-year-old Zewditu Gebreyohanes has been appointed by the government to the board of the Victoria and Albert Museum. The young journalist and activist has encouraged people to ‘rejoin the National Trust to save it from wokery’... which is a fascinating concept, we must say. Under the chairmanship of Sir Nicholas Coleridge – knighted for services to glossy magazines – the V&A board has an interesting bunch of trustees, including the Irish designer, Jonathan Anderson.
While his work may be lauded, the Loewe honcho has a curious approach to public service. As we detailed in a previous newsletter, in May 2020, Vogue asked 53 London-based fashion designers to draw a rainbow for the NHS, as our nurses and doctors sacrificed themselves to try the coronavirus at bay. Nearly all the designers rose to the challenge magnificently, but Anderson, rather than providing a work from his own hand, deputed the task to an assistant. His excuse? He didn’t have any crayons at home.
Artemisia Gentileschi’s Gentlemen’s Club
Every so often, we will highlight a book written by some young scrivener outside our immediate fold, and we’re happy to do so with Katy Hessel’s The Story of Art Without Men, which has been winning rave reviews across the board. Inverting Gombrich’s classic tome, Hessel details the legions of women artists who have been overlooked and underappreciated throughout the centuries. Compiled with zip and wit, even the informed reader will learn something new on every page – we really cannot recommend it enough, and you can purchase a copy here.
Five! Six! Seven! Eight!
Well you may well have seen the trailer for Michael Flatley’s unlikely foray into auteur cinema, you may not know that Blackbird is now on general release in Ireland. It’s all very exciting for us, as a few months back, we published an article following a few dedicated cineastes as they crossed continents to try and secure a viewing of the Lord of the Dance’s Bond-tribute. But Flatley doesn’t just have a passion for the silver screen, he’s also an amateur painter, and, unsurprisingly – he paints with his feet.
Headline Hodder Headline
If you have ever thought, ‘yeah those guys at The Fence think they’re good, but, you know what? I think a child could do better’ – then you’re in luck: a child has done better – much, much better. Ian Martin, one of the sages behind The Death of Stalin, has one very talented grandson. Having seen the efforts with our first book, this child prodigy has blown us out of the water with his ‘MortalZilla’ – a shy and polite mega-lizard who actually quite likes architecture. Elsewhere, man-about-town Ethan Croft provides another sneak peek inside here, in which we pay tribute to that most reliable muse, the great Peter Hitchens.
Now, you can beat the crashing hordes who will be swarming like ants around Daunt Books come 29 September by pre-ordering your copy through this link – where you can also have a look at some of the sh*t literary siblings gathered inside the pages. Everyone’s a winner.
In Case You Missed It
Janine Gibson, a woman of excellent taste, takes Piers Morgan out for some tapas.
Watch out for my footprint! Hannah Ritchie writes on how counterintuitive it can be to be an effective environmentalist.
Inside a million-dollar Instagram verification scheme – Craig Silverman and Bianca Fortis track a blue-tick heist.
One of the most moving articles we’ve ever read: Merope Mills celebrates the life of her daughter, Martha, who should have celebrated her 15th birthday at the weekend, and whose life was cruelly cut short by a series of catastrophic NHS blunders.
The Guggenheims of the Gamecube: Bijan Stephen meets the collectors preserving video game history.
And Finally
For every genuine ‘national treasure’, there are dozens of less-worthy competitors itching for the mantle – and so it is with Joan Collins, who in her 90th year, was found ranting on a daytime television sofa this very morning about the meaning of the word ‘diva’. The actress, who was perhaps the first real celebrity backer of the U.K Independence Party back in 2004, has been a star for almost seven decades – but in 1981 she became a global star, playing Alexis Colby in Dynasty.
In that same year, she also collaborated with Phillip Green to launch a line of jeans at a central London hotel, and Barry Norman was there to watch over proceedings and to provide a clip that is truly one for the ages.
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That’s it for this week, and we look forward to joining you next Monday, when Kieran Morris will be in charge again (briefly). Issue 13 is being plumped and preened at the moment for an early October release, and has some quite an anarchic, playful energy to it – a return to earlier iterations of the magazine. Now, if you’ve got any issues, comments or postal queries, do reply to this email and we will come back to you shortly. And don’t forget about the digital deal – there’s a link just below.
All the best,
TF
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