Dear Readers,
Good evening, and welcome to Off The Fence, a weekly newsletter to complement the quarterly print magazine. Issue 13 is landing early next week, which is very exciting news for us all – we’ve got contributions from John Lanchester, Linda Colley and Oliver Bullough, and we’ve got features from young stars like Jade Angeles Fitton and Michelle Taylor, and there are some intensely stupid articles written by the editorial team that you might enjoy.
Now, the price of a subscription is going to increase to £30 for the year on 21 October, so do take advantage of the time and sign up today while the price is only £25 – a comically cheap sum for four magazines, if we say so ourselves.
Issue 12 sold out some time ago, and with that beautiful cover and limited print run it’s likely to be a collector’s item in the years to come, so if you want to secure a copy, you can do so through our pals at Village Books, who ship internationally.
Today, we’ve got some bits on Louise Mensch and Steven Gerrard, but we lead with a couple of questions about what’s happened to everyone’s favourite people.
Govoryashchaya Chush
In March 2022, it seemed that the Russian oligarchs’ days of squatting on the British establishment were numbered, as they were hit with a punishing set of sanctions by the government. But six months later, some of them are still resident in the United Kingdom.
Just today, Transparency International have found that there are over 33 properties linked to sanctioned oligarchs subject to asset freezes – including Fame Academy’s Witanhurst.
The mansion’s neighbours – Beechwood House and Athlone House – are also owned by sanctioned oligarchs, and neither residence seems to be in the grip of an ‘asset freeze’.
This long-read by Max Seddon suggests that the oligarchs themselves might be used as bargaining tools by the West, while also fielding phone calls from the Kremlin encouraging them to return home: not a fun place to be in, you must admit. Either way, it seems that the rule of law is operating in mysterious ways behind the electric gates on Hampstead Lane.
She Walks in Beauty
Over on Instagram, we’re sharing some more articles from the latest issues, all loaded with beautiful illustrations from Célestin Krier, Natalya Lobanova and Davey Jones. And we’re going to be posting a lot more, too, so do join us here if you haven’t done so already.
The Pigeon Fanciers Ball
Seventeen years after his retirement, Mike Tyson is still a global celebrity, his name synonymous with brutal and brilliant violence – as one moronic fan discovered this year, when he goaded the boxer on an airplane flight. Fascinated by this episode, we asked John Saward to examine the afterlife of this peculiar American icon, and the whole brilliant piece is now available to read here.
Rising to the Top
Last Friday, our debut Sh*t Literary Siblings was launched, and we’re delighted to see readers showing off their copies online. If you’ve already bagged a book, then copy the tasteful James Riding and hit us up on Twitter, or its most beautiful cousin, Instagram.
If you haven’t scored your copy yet, the surest way to do so is through this link here – we want to get rising up those charts so please do move with all due haste and lack of abandon.
The Aintree Ladies
There’s a big scoop all over the tabloids today: Steven Gerrard, Liverpool legend, former England captain and current manager of Aston Villa, has been hanging out with Liam Byrne, an Irish drug cartel boss – Byrne’s son and Gerrard’s daughter are dating each other.
While there is no suggestion that the tubthumping midfielder is in any way associated with organised crime, you might want to find the time for this classic piece of Daily Mail muck-raking from 2008, which takes a periscope into Gerrard’s links with his home city.
Venus Envy
Louise Mensch, neé Bagshawe, resigned as an MP over a decade ago. During her two years representing the Northamptonshire constituency of Corby, the former novelist turned heads for her cool questioning of the Murdoch family during the phone-hacking scandal, and for admitting to taking Class A drugs, which back then people thought was kind of a ‘big deal’ for a Conservative politician. But just last night, she issued the most astonishing reply to a tweet from Pope Francis, where she begged His Holiness to ‘STOP SIMPING FOR THE DEVIL’.
If you’re not familiar with her more recent work, then you should know that this isn’t Louise first rodeo – she once gleefully (and inaccurately) reported that Steve Bannon was being considered for the death penalty. Back on home turf, she suggested that Jeremy Corbyn’s support was ‘a sewer’ of antisemitism – not realising that what she declared to be Twitter’s autocorrect function was actually, unfortunately, just her own search terms.
An Old-Fashioned Hatchet Job
Yes, it’s one of those. Ryan Ruby has demolished Ian McEwan’s latest offering with ice-cold analytical precision. Ruby finishes by asking why the feted novelist bothered to write the novel (because he can, and because he gets paid lots of money to do so?)
But a broader question remains: why does McEwan excite such warlike tendencies among the younger generation of writers and critics? Answers on a postcard, please.
The Last King of Scotland
The world becomes a little bit of a darker place whenever we lose a bonafide one-of-a-kind oddball, and last Friday, we lost one of the strangest: the Japanese fighter-turned-freelance diplomat Antonio Inoki, who passed away in Tokyo aged 79. Heralded as the father of modern MMA, and of the modern celebrity exhibition match, Inoki’s six-million-dollar prize fight with Muhammad Ali was watched by an estimated audience of 1.4 billion in 1976 (not a typo), and yet that stat isn’t even in the top twenty weirdest things about the man.
For one, he very nearly arranged a sequel fight, between himself and Idi Amin two years later in Kampala, with Ali signed on as special guest referee – plans were only shelved when Amin was deposed from power. Inoki ran similar ‘unofficial missions’ in Iraq during the first Gulf War, when he negotiated directly with Saddam and Uday Hussein for the release of 41 Japanese hostages, and again in North Korea in 1995, when he commandeered a plane full of American wrestlers on tour in Japan, and took them to perform in Pyongyang for Kim Jong-il. Somewhere along the way, Inoki became friends with Fidel Castro, from whom he bought an island off the rumour it was loaded with treasure, and which he then named ‘Inoki Friendship Island’.
For those wondering how ostentatious a funeral the man may want, you needn’t imagine: in 2017, while still a sitting member of the Japanese Diet, Inoki hosted his own ‘living funeral’ in Tokyo’s legendary Sumo Hall, which concluded with him being hoisted onto a crucifix, and then eventually climbing atop his empty casket and proclaiming to the crowd that he wasn’t dead yet.
Well, he is now – bon voyage, Inoki-san.
Roy of the Rovers
In August, we paid a birthday tribute to the fusty curator, Sir Roy Strong, who is still keeping fit in his 88th year thanks to extensive workouts in his local gym in Hereford. We asked readers if they had any memorable encounters with the former head honcho of the V & A, and there was one particularly memorable reply that we print below.
‘When we spoke on the phone he was everything you’d hope for and more: pretty cantankerous and much given to shouting down the phone at me. What really stuck out in my mind though, was a comment he made about Anna Wintour. He mentioned her father in passing (a famous journalist), so I asked if he’d ever met Anna. “The GIRL?” he boomed at me. “Yes,” I said. Then there was a long pause after which he said, in a voice so scathing I’ve never forgotten it, “She wasn't very tall.”’
The famed figure of Nuclear Wintour was, it seems, no match for the man who threatened to burn down his own gardens. We really would love some more ‘Strong Anecdotes’ – hopefully, it will be a brief mini-series, so do reply to this email if you’ve got a good one.
In Case You Missed It
Arguably the finest account of the nation’s mourning yet written came from Huw Lemmey, who watched the funeral in Lambeth gay sauna, Pleasuredome.
ProPublica’s Megan Rose lifts the whistle on a truly eye-watering US Navy scandal surrounding the fire on the USS Bonhomme Richard, and the attempt to swerve blame for a litany of failures by pinning responsibility on a single man.
Ade Onibada talks to the family of friends taken in by toxic male influencers, and reports on the wreckage left behind, for Buzzfeed.
Yim Hyun-su charts the unlikely prevalence, and strange roots, of the term ‘Leeds Era’ in South Korea, from online football communities describing the glory days of footballer Alan Smith, to ubiquity in everyday Korean speech.
Friend of the Fence, Max Norman, tells readers what you can tell about Italy from the country’s social media.
And Finally
It really is something that once is seen, can never be forgotten – it’s Hilary Clinton interviewing a 100-year-old French clown. As simple, and as magical, as that.
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We’ll join you next week, with a profile of one of Liz Truss’ key advisors – it’ll be one for the political nerds. In the meantime, if you would like to check the status of your subscription, then do reply to this email. And if you’d like to buy a new subscription before it gets a little bit more expensive, there’s a link just below. As ever, if you’d like to talk to have a natter or ‘chat shop’ with a member of the editorial team, we’re always here. Until the next time.
All the best,
TF
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