Dear Readers,
Good afternoon, Merry Christmas, and welcome to the ninety-seventh edition of Off The Fence, the advertorial cudgel that exists to drum home the virtues of our beautiful quarterly. This is our penultimate dispatch before the great carnival of excess that marks our festive period, and so we’re keeping this quite light: nothing too stodgy, but enough to line your stomachs for the week ahead.
As you are reading this, we can exclusively confirm that all copies of Issue 14 have been shoved, with grace, into the deliveries hatch of the Clapham Junction Post Office, so if you’re already signed up, keep your eyes peeled for the postie who should be bringing you a copy shortly – and don’t forget to tip them! If you’re not signed up yet, then don’t fear: that’s easily corrected right here, at a cost of thirty English pounds and not a penny more (for UK subbers only, that is, but we’ve taken a fiver off the shipping charges for US and EU customers).
Truth be told, this one’s a barnstormer, cover-to-cover, with some of the best writing and illustration on either side of the Atlantic right now. Things will only be getting better in 2023, so sign up right away and get the best of the best before anyone else does.
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This week, we’ve got a featurette on the origins of Brass Eye, and a recap of the rewilding war we inadvertently started last week, but first, a little sketch from high up in the Alps, and a bar full of disappointed Frenchmen, courtesy of Will Yates.
Arretez Les Blues
The sun is fading on the other side of the valley, and the Ecole du Ski Francais instructors are slouched around a repurposed barrel drinking Kronenbourg and flirting lazily with each other. This is the ski resort of Les Coches, the midpoint between the hulking modernist mega-hotels of Les Arcs and La Plagne, and White Lines pub is the only place in the village showing the World Cup Final. As Lionel Messi scores a penalty in the 23rd minute, a groan goes up inside. Elderly Frenchmen gesticulate at the enormous projector screen, and a few snowboarders shuffle out for a cigarette. We take the opportunity to squeeze inside, and spend the next hour and a half enduring the agony and the ecstasy of a French World Cup final among the occasional fans of the Savoie.
Between gassy first-half pints of Affligem, I learn that the raised hollow fist of the ‘wanker’ gesture transcends linguistic boundaries, and so does the cock-eyed self-delusion of the football fan in a losing cause. ‘Mais c’est QUOI, ça?,’ roars a dungaree-clad barman, slopping Guinness at his feet as Messi bisects the French midfield yet again. ‘Putains,’ growls a man behind me in response to Olivier Giroud being neatly dispossessed by the Argentinian back line. I look around and see that he’s brought his twin daughters with him, both waist-high to the adults in their ski boots. I bend down and ask in ropey French If they can see OK, at which point they give me the same look of withering pity that all French children learn in the section of their nursery curriculum marked ‘Dealing with the English’. One of them points silently at the giant projector screen before returning to her bottle of Orangina. Her father scowls.
Ten minutes later, and Di Maria’s goal sends another tranche of fans reaching for their fags. I step outside with them, and find a boy who can’t be more than 14 glumly puffing away. I ask him if he thinks France can win from here. ‘We’re playing like shit,’ he says, stubbing out his rollie on a Haribo bag, ‘but at least we made it this far.’ He looks pointedly at the group of English saisonnaires vaping at the front of the room with some of their middle-aged clients. A posse of baggy-trousered teens barge through the throng and install themselves next to the several English girls cooing over a half-time advert featuring Antoine Griezmann. ‘He’s so fit,’ coos one. ‘He ‘as stupid ‘air,’ snorts one of the boys, retouching his wispy goatee pointedly.
In the last fifteen minutes of the 90 minutes, Kylian Mbappe’s blazing attacks and masterful shithousery thrill the room. Every darting run brings roars, and his nipping at the heels of weary Argentinian midfielders draw approving claps. His staggered-start penalty to claw back a goal gives the crowd hope; the volley from distance lashed into the bottom corner gives them belief. ‘ALLEEEEEEZ LA FRAN-CE’ fills the bar, the elongation of a syllable for chanting purposes a Gallic equivalent of ‘En-ger-land’.
In the brief, gasping interlude between regulation play and extra time, I dash to the car park for a piss. The privacy I want is clearly not a going concern for two older French gentlemen, who stand merrily spraying into the virgin snow, enjoying a view of the starlit valley far below as they do so. ‘C’est beau, non?’ one asks the other. He chuckles.
Extra time brings with it exactly the sort of emotional self-indulgence for which the French are famed worldwide. When the third Argentina goal goes in, it is English voices that instantly shout ‘Offside!’, while the French reaction is more of a guttural lowing. Mbappe’s second penalty sends them into raptures, but they take a more masochistic delight in Kolo Muani’s two gilt-edged chances missed from close range in the game’s dying moments. ‘La tête, la tête…’ groans an immaculately coiffed grand-mère in round glasses, clutching her face as the slow-mo replay shows the ball just evading his forehead.
After Montiel secures Argentinian victory in the shootout, the room deflates. A neutral’s attempt to start a round of applause for the greatest final in living memory is met with the sort of disbelieving stares normally reserved for those applauding an EasyJet touchdown. The flushed faces and wobbling gaits of those streaming out make it feel much later than 7pm. The French are silent, but the English are determined to enjoy their evening. As we depart, we hear the unmistakable tones of a Home Counties dad: ‘Can you text the hotel and let them know we’ll be late for canapes?’
They Only Take Card
Clive Martin is the one of the most influential Millennial journalists (and it’s to his eternal credit that he’d resent that framing) and we’re absolutely delighted to see him regularly contribute to our pages.
Over the last decade, the Keep-Calm-And-Carry-On quality of British life has been assaulted by a fantastic array of conspiratorial thinking that you might associate with our American cousins across the water. Perhaps the most curious new development is ‘Cash is King’, a Stroud-based movement who see the retreat of hard currency as the latest iteration in New World Order power grabs.
If you think this is something niche, then we’re afraid you need to think again. The movement is gathering pace and amassing numbers – Clive’s piece is the first to document Cash Is King, and, aside from that, it’s a wonderfully acute piece of writing on Britain as it is today. You can read it here.
If You Go Down to the Woods Today
The Fence is not, as regular readers will know, shy of controversy and we were delighted that a recent piece of criticism stirred up a thermonuclear reaction in some quarters. Harriet Rix has produced a masterful review of Guy Shrubsole’s Lost Rainforests of Britain project for us online, skewering the bizarreness of the rewilding movement as well as the hypocrisies and stylistic oddness of the specific text. It’s a riveting read but, alas, some members of the very online rewilding community have been sent, well, a little wild by it. George Monbiot is now three days into his furious reaction: give Harriet’s piece a boost and let’s try and get three days more of haughty Old Stoic tweets.
And you should also read Sophie Yeo’s interview with the legendary botanist, Margaret Bradshaw, who is still riding her horse across the Teeside fells at the age of 96.
In Case You Missed It
A great LRB piece from Jon Parry, as he gives a searing review of Andrew Roberts’ biography-slash-hagiography of Lord Northcliffe.
A highlight of the year, it’s Chris Coates’ Christmas Cracker – a review of the year, but penned by a self-styled idiot.
For the Atlantic, David Sims explores the dark side of Steven Spielberg.
2022 has been bad for humanity, but pretty good for film and music (but not so good for theatre). A lot of great albums have been released by top-tier names, but as Emma Garland writes here, a lot of the most exciting new music is happening away from the charts.
The impermeable, untouchable brilliance of Absolutely Fabulous, celebrated by David Odyssey, 30 years later.
And Finally
It’s been a quarter of a century since Brass Eye first smashed through our TV screens, and it remains the gold standard of British satire: so extreme, so absurd, and still rapier-sharp in its slashing of media sensationalism. And yet, with only seven episodes available, you can find yourself desperate for more after rewatching them all for – in our case at least – the two-hundredth time over.
Well do not fear, as you can catch most of the same buzz from watching The Cook Report, the preposterous investigative stalwart of 80s ITV – except this time, they’re not playing for laughs. Roger Cook walked so that Ted Maul could run, ambushing rogue traders and video-store pornographers with the same bluster and blunder that Morris would mimic ten years later. He needs to be seen to be believed. Older readers might already be fully au fait with the chaos of The Cook Report, but whether you’re new to the show or fancy reacquainting yourself over the holiday break, this episode, on the age of pills, thrills and bellyaches, is a great place to start.
Unfortunately, we can’t devote as much time to surfing YouTube as we once could, so please send through your favourite bits from the show – all episodes are available online – and we’ll divvy up the best bits for all readers.
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And that’s that! We’ll be joining you once more next week, for an end-of-year review with a bit of a twist. If you’d like to drop the editorial team any sort of message, from festive to abusive, just reply to this email here and it’ll land straight in our inbox. If your copy lands this week, send us a picture on Twitter or over email and we’ll dream up some sort of prize for the most imaginative snap: some fizz or a cheese board or something, whatever’s in the Boxing Day sales. Until the next time.
All the best,
TF
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