Dear Readers,
Good evening, and welcome to Off The Fence, a newsletter that now celebrates its 90th iteration with Issue 13 nestled with subscribers. Thank you to everyone who has shared snaps on social media. Some highlights: Andrew Comiskey calls it ‘a great wee satirical mag’ (which is very kind of him), Luke Turner has paired the issue with a foaming pint of beer and there has been praise for the ‘incredibly strong artwork’ in the issue. It really is very good! And it will be sold out soon – secure your copy through the webstore right here.
Some brief housekeeping: the cost of a UK subscription has risen by £5 to £30. The costs of international subscription (Europe and further abroad) remains the same. Issue 14 will cost £7.50.
The costs of printing, posting and distributing the magazines have increased dramatically this year. We are committed to providing value for our subscribers, and £30 for four magazines and 50 newsletters p/a is a lot cheaper than nearly every other independent quarterly, and most Substacks, too. We hope that those of you who enjoy our work online and this mail-out will continue to sign-up for the year so we can keep growing the project.
And if you haven’t come across it already, there’s a particularly nice interview about all things TF, in which the features editor, Séamas O’Reilly, speaks to his old friends at Totally Dublin about this very publication.
To business. Today, we’ve got some great detail on Prince Harry’s upcoming book, but we lead with a piece from Burnley. Almost two years ago, Father Alex Frost and his friend Pastor Mick Fleming starred in a BBC documentary, which showed how the poor in Burnley were kept from destitution and starvation by the energies of the Church of England.
Energised by this dispatch, one of our editorial team visited the town just before lockdown. We launched a Christmas appeal which raised over £10,000 for the parish of St Matthew’s.
Now, Father Alex has a book out, which chronicles his life as he moved from working in Argos to the priesthood. It’s a funny and moving memoir, and we commend it to you. As Father Alex’s work has been relatively well-documented, we were amazed to learn that the local MP for Burnley has yet to visit the church and its food bank, so we asked him to tell us about why our current crop of parliamentarians struggle to interact with the poor.
Our Daily Bread
I understand in my role as the Vicar of St Matthew’s Burnley, that sometimes I must do things that are unpleasant and minister in some of the most challenging situations. That could be anything from conducting the funeral of a baby or even cleaning the backside of a homeless person who has soiled themselves. In situations like this I really don’t have a choice, often I must puff out my chest and just get on with it.
Some of those agonising experiences were shared with the world through the lens of BBC News, when myself and my friend Pastor Mick featured in a documentary entitled The Cost of COVID. The news item brought huge interest to our respective ministries, not to mention huge donations of generosity from people who were deeply moved by the film that was shown.
Perhaps surprisingly, then, I wonder why it didn’t seem to resonate with my own Member of Parliament, Antony Higginbotham who has represented Burnley as a Conservative MP since his landslide victory in 2019. Despite the newspaper articles, the television appearances, the radio interviews, the donations, and visits from Prince William and his wife, I never received a single correspondence from them. I didn’t even receive a call or an email to acknowledge the news item and the issues that were raised.
The Devlin family are parishioners of mine. They lost their young daughter Kelsey, who died suddenly on a trip to Pakistan. Kelsey left the UK a fit and healthy lady, only to be taken ill, dying in a hospital bed, and being buried somewhere near Islamabad. During that period, the family appointed me as a point of contact to deal with the numerous stakeholders in what became an increasingly difficult experience for all concerned. One of the people we felt could help during this horrible situation was our Member of Parliament for Burnley.
It makes me wonder why he didn’t reach out to the family in a time of loss, or perhaps even attend the memorial service for Kelsey where we said our farewells to a church full of flowers and people but without Kelsey or even a coffin. As a Christian minister – a vicar being my formal title – I really don’t wish to personalise my feelings toward those who are democratically elected. However, I do think it is imperative to challenge those elected to serve us, and I wonder if this parliamentary landscape has lost its moral compass; where integrity and substance play second fiddle to rhetorical rambling and more bullshit than Jeremy Clarkson's farmyard.
Earlier this year, Keir Starmer took the trouble to visit Burnley College. I was invited as a local minister and I enjoyed listening to the aspirations and dreams of a rejuvenated Labour Party and how they were going to breathe new life into the economy, local business, education blah blah blah. Keir came and joined our table for discussion, and after decades of working in middle management mediocrity for Argos, I immediately sensed a whiff of the oratory corporate spiel that I’d heard many times before.
In my desire to break the highly polished and well-rehearsed soundbites, I rudely interrupted Keir, looked him in the eye, and said to him, ‘You need to come and see it, because if you come and see it, you might feel it in your heart, and if you feel It in your heart, you are more likely to do something about it, rather than say something about it’.
In that moment of hitting the pause button on the Leader of the Opposition's soundtrack, I actually felt like I had broken through. ‘I will,’ he said, ‘I’ll try to come’. Perhaps surprisingly then, he didn’t, and hasn’t, and probably won’t, and perhaps surprisingly, then, I shouldn’t be too disappointed – and I’m not. But maybe the whole point of an MP’s call should be rooted in the challenge of not simply saying what we want to hear; but rooted in the challenge of saying what we don’t want to hear. To put themselves in the places they don’t want to go, where they don’t want to be seen. I don’t want our MPs pictured at a garden fete: I want my MPs pictured where the fate of people’s lives is at stake. Where their hearts are probed and their heads are shaken. Probed and shaken enough to make a difference. An invisible MP is no use to anyone, least of all to the communities they are elected to serve.
Father Alex’s book – which has been well-reviewed by our very Fergus Butler-Gallie – is available to buy here.
The Heir and the Spare
The cover-reveal for Prince Harry’s forthcoming memoir dominated the newscycle last week (not there’s much else on at the moment).
The book had been pegged for an October launch, but that has now been delayed till January. The Fence hears that the books had been printed in August, but the whole printing run had to be pulped after the Queen’s death – and there is now a hastily assembled chapter in her honour, as the original copy was, we are told, slightly more scathing.
It’s not the first time an institution has put itself in peril to help Prince Harry. Will the ginger scribe tackle the coursework incident at Eton? Or will he go into detail about the level of secret protection accorded to him by the army during his tours to Afghanistan? We look forward to finding out.
Another Case from Berry Bros?
Pankaj Mishra, feted writer, is in hot water over a controversial piece for the Guardian about Rishi Sunak and his ‘showy Hinduism’. Critics have pointed out that Mishra is married to David Cameron’s cousin, so is not well-placed to expound on elitism.
A couple of years ago, we celebrated Pankaj’s taste for the good life with a piece called ‘What the LRB Bought Me’ – which still reads beautifully today. A staffer at the LRB told us that Linda Colley thought it was very funny (and that their base rate is actually 50p a word). We’ll get round to changing that eventually.
Under the Chancellor’s Thumb
Inspired by Bismarck’s famous dictum, we pestered the world’s leading historians to ask ‘what is the single greatest fact in modern political history in 2022?'
The bounty crop of replies is available to enjoy online – it’s a lot of long-reads compressed into a series of short-reads (haha). Thank you to all the bigwigs who fielded our emails with such good grace.
Atlanta’s Champagne
Walking around Soho, it’s amazing to see the variable prices of a can of Coca Cola in shops on the same block. In some stores, it’s 95p, in others it’s £1.50, and in other places it’s a rip-off £2.50. So we thought to ourselves: what’s going on here?
Harking back to the glory days of GCSE geography fieldwork, we tramped the streets of the local neighbourhood, pencil in hand, to note down how much each shop charges for a can of Coke.
Then we decided to give it the visual treatment, and brought in Paul Cox to draw a beautiful illustration of the ‘Soho Map of Cokes’ – which you can see here.
And we were absolutely delighted to see that it reminded Misti Traya of Sebastian Horsley, who wrote a lovely letter to her husband when they got married. Yes, this is exactly what we set out to do: evoke memories of London’s vibiest district through the medium of delicious fizzy drinks and gorgeous pen and ink.
If you’re interested in a print of the ‘Soho Map of Cokes’ – do let us know by replying to this email. We are contemplating bringing out a special full-colour version, but only if the people will it.
All Hallows’ Eve
We are pushing on to our goal of 2,000 subscribers for the year, and we have noticed something rather amazing: to the best of our knowledge, not a single one of our subscribers has died since we started the magazine three years ago.
Now this can mean only one thing: a sub to The Fence is the elixir of life, and if you pay just £30 a year, you will live forever. All you need to do is sign up here. (And, you must admit, eternal life is a little bit better than a tote bag.)
Raised by Dingoes
Harry Enfield and Paul Whitehouse’s long-awaited tribute to the BBC centenary has landed, and is available to watch on iPlayer.
The programme-length commitment to the Adam Curtis parody means that you need to have some knowledge of the documentarian’s output to really enjoy the show. It’s a strange, clever hour of satire, with less stand-out moments than the Story of the Twos, but then that show was made in 2011, when the BBC wasn’t under existential threat from the government, and could afford two of its biggest stars rinsing their colleagues with snickering abandon.
After galloping through history, the show really kicks off in the last fifteen minutes when we come to more recent times. Those of you who feel that the BBC has got too ‘woke’ will relish some of those final sketches in particular…
Truss me, Daddy
There is now an article about our very cool board game on a website dedicated to very cool board games and comics – you can read the piece here. At the time of writing, we still have a couple of games stuck around the office, so if you would like to buy one, get in touch by replying to this email and we’ll get one dispatched to you.
In Case You Missed It
Andrew Downie asks: why do Brazilian footballers like Bolsonaro?
Rosemary Hill remembers her friend, Carmen Callil.
What happened when the Hindu right came for Bollywood – Samanth Subramanian sends a letter from Mumbai.
It’s that time of year again – ‘yet more things Nicky Haslam finds common’.
The years of lead: Madeleine Feeny reviews Thea Lenarduzzi’s brilliant memoir for the FT.
And Finally
Here’s a fascinating peek behind the curtain, as John Carpenter sets up a scene in Halloween with Donald Pleasance on the set. The whole documentary is in the comments below, if you fancy an appropriately spooky (yet intellectually sober) show for your evening’s entertainment.
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That’s it for this week. The introduction will be shorter next time around! Please bear in mind there have been days of Royal Mail strikes, so post is a bit delayed at the moment, but if your order has not arrived, then do get in touch with us by replying to this email. And if you’d like to talk to us about anything else, then we’d love to hear from you. Please keep sharing snaps of the mag ‘out in the wild’ and we look forward to joining you next Monday. Until then.
All the best,
TF
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