Dear Readers,
Good evening once more, and welcome to the ninety-third edition of Off The Fence, our weekly meal deal sandwich to sate you between banquets of the magazine. Winter is here, clouds are grey, and the winds ever more biting, but Issue 14 is now approaching completion, all set to be dusting your doorsteps in time for the festive season. This issue, just like all the others, is verifiably The Best Yet, stay tuned in the weeks to come for more updates on this edition’s star cast.
If you didn’t get last week’s newsletter – check your spam folder. There are some very good bits in there.
This week, we’ve got disgraced football shills, the crown’s view on The Crown, and sketches of ungentrified Camberwell. But first, a bit of intel on a Centrist Dad pin-up.
Pesto Pasta Salad
Last week, Robert Peston announced that he had been ‘barred’ from a gentleman’s club for wearing ‘comfortable mid-top trainers’ and that he had been forced to borrow appropriate footwear from a porter. Even though the sneaker-sporting journalist is 62 years old, he seems – at least in his own telling – to still be a pretty hip kind of guy. But is he secretly a little bit square?
A friend of The Fence invited Peston to a shin-dig, where a sound system was rented, and dance music was played loudly to encourage dancing at the party (as has happened at parties for thousands of years). But this was a novel experience for the political editor of ITV news: Peston was so entranced with the sound system as a concept, so surprised that technology and commerce allow you to create a nightclub atmosphere in your own home – and spent the rest of evening earnestly asking questions about how to go about renting speakers (go on the internet, Peston) while anxiously skanking to the repetitive beats.
Atlanta’s Champagne
We have printed 50 copies of Paul Cox’s ‘Soho Map of Cokes’, and they are looking beautiful. They’re signed by the author, and are A2 size, and we’re selling them for £40 plus shipping, which is really very cheap indeed (Paul Cox prints go for considerably more elsewhere).
If you’d like to get your hands on a copy, reply to this email, but do it quickly – we’ve already sold seven this afternoon.
Camberwell Groove
Here’s a fun little statistic: the south London neighbourhood of Camberwell has the highest number of TF subscribers (Peckham is second). It goes without saying that the neighbourhood has changed a lot recently (as urban districts are wont to do). Currently, the most expensive SE5 property on the market is 123 Grove Lane, which is on the market for £5 million.
Throughout the eighties and nineties, this smart part of Camberwell was once full of squats – and 123 Grove Lane was the last remaining one. Originally built as a childrens’ home, it has more than an acre of gardens, and up until 2021 had a bunch of squatters warding off the attentions of the police and bailiffs as they ‘protected’ the trees, as you can see in this video here.
It’s easy to laugh at the squatters and their passionate arbology. But squatting has been a vital plank in Camberwell’s cultural DNA for decades – read Felix Petty’s witty insider piece for more details.
And you can watch, or rewatch the Camberwell Grove episode of Secret History of Our Streets, one of the cleverest pieces of television in recent memory. The granular story of an individual London street is told by its residents past and present, and this episode features Dave, a local man who turned an empty Georgian house just round the corner from 123 Grove Lane into a squat – and won over all his neighbours. It’s a warm, charming programme, and you can watch it here.
By Royal Disappointment
A favourite question posed by toadying interviewers to minor royals – be it James Corden to Prince Harry or Alan Titchmarsh to Earl Spencer – is ‘do you watch The Crown?’. Like most such interrogations, what is posed as a serious probe is in fact a consequence-free teeing up. See here.
Equally keen to stoke the supposed rift between the House of Windsor and Netflix are self appointed ‘royal watchers’. The Fence hates to let the drama seekers down but understands that the Crown is ambivalent to or even largely pro, well, The Crown. Crucially, all of the filming locations – specifically Burghley House and Belvoir Castle – are owned and run by Deputy Lord Lieutenants of various counties with close personal links to the Palace. If King Charles – or anyone else for that matter – was really as angry and upset as people have speculated, surely a spidery handwritten note would have found its way to Mrs Miranda Rock of Burghley or The Duke of Rutland of Belvoir by now?
Between Brexit and the Deep Blue Sea
It’s always a joy when we get to celebrate one of our own in this newsletter, and this week, we’re toasting our fiction editor, John Phipps, for his nine-month investigation for 1843 from the frontline of the British migrant crisis. Gaining unprecedented access from the RNLI, John has spent this year going to and from Dungeness, meeting the volunteers tasked with saving those in desperate need from capsizing their makeshift boats in the bitter, indiscriminate Channel. The end result is an empathetic and rigorous piece of journalism; a portrait of a town and an institution pushed into filling in the gaps where the state has failed – often consciously – to step up & take responsibility. Read it if you haven’t, read it again if you have.
Entente Discordiale
We doubt that a single one of you have heard of a British comedian called Paul Taylor, who is in his mid-thirties and has over 570,000 subscribers on YouTube. That’s because Taylor lives and works in Paris, where he makes truly dreadful shorts for Canal TV about the differences between English and French culture. Thrumming with petty rage and performative swearing, they are possibly the least funny things we’ve seen all year – you can sample his work here.
Winter Content Tasting Menu
In case you missed them, we offer a carefully curated selection of recent pieces from the mag. To start, feast on Michelle Taylor’s marvellous guide to the fantastically boring private correspondence of T. S. Eliot. If you’re looking for something spicier to heat up these cold winter nights, then we heartily recommend Michael Gillard’s brilliant exposé of the secret life of a high ranking civil servant. Finally, as World Cup fever finally begins to take hold after England’s win, round things off with musicologist Chris Milton’s joyous explainer about why certain songs work as football chants and others don’t. As ever, these appear first and most beautifully in print for our subscribers; if you’d like to join that happy band for only £30 a year, sign up here.
In Case You Missed It
After the spectacular collapse of his cryptocurrency exchange, FTX, last week or so ago, now-ex-billionaire Sam Bankman-Fried attempts to explain his actions to Vox.
On the topic of multi-billion dollar failures, the New York Times goes over the unfathomably disastrous merger between two corporate giants, AT&T and Time Warner.
Hannah Jane Parkinson retraces her own steps into gambling addiction, in parallel with an exploration of a mendacious industry with all too big a role in British life.
Cold showers are offered as a panacea for all manner of problems, physical and spiritual. But do they work? CNET’s Mark Serrels took one a day for a year to answer that question conclusively.
Michael Hainey celebrates the legendary West Village bar, Corner Bistro, (one of the coolest joints on the planet.)
And Finally
You may not have wanted Qatar to have the World Cup, we may not have wanted Qatar to have the World Cup, but if there’s one man who has been truly and utterly vindicated by this tournament, it is the indomitable, irrepressible, uncancellable Richard Keys. See, Keys was very much a trailblazer when it came to soaking up the bad stench of dubious morality with wads and wads of Qatari cash, hotfooting it to beIN Sports with his similarly-disgraced broadcasting partner, Andy Gray, in the wake of their dismissal from Sky in 2011. As such, the cantankerous pair have been able to recapture their noxious brand of punditry for a global audience, and have been counting down the days for when the world would come to their new backyard. Unfortunately, the reception has not been as laudatory as they may have hoped – just watch this clip where Dutch legend Ruud Gullit, on his way into the beIN Sports studio, leaves Keys twisting in the wind as he repeatedly avoids shaking his hand. Better luck next time, Keysy: try again at Riyadh 2038!
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That’s just about that for this week’s edition. As ever, if you’d like to scream at us, whisper sweet nothings, pass on praise or any baseless accusations for us to dig into, our inboxes are open and our eyes are wide: reply to this email and make our day. If you’ve liked what you’ve read so far and feel inclined to read more, a subscription is only £30 and will keep you warm and well-stocked throughout 2023. We will be joining you on Thursday with some Christmas gift options and then we’ll be back at a normal time on Monday.
All the best,
TF
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