Dear Readers,
Good morning, and welcome to Off The Fence, the last newsletter of 2022, and as such, we’ve got a suitably packed edition to round off the year. Issue 14 should be with all subscribers now – unless you are abroad – so please do share some snaps of the magazine on Twitter or Instagram. Just to select men who have first names beginning with ‘J’, Jimmy McIntosh took the train to Nottingham with the mag, Jamie Fewery showed off the issue in Southwold, and James Waddell also paired it with a pint – and an ashtray. It’s just what we like to see! If you’re willing and able, please send us more photos, and feel free to show your favourite bits from inside (though it is great to see that beautiful Nishant Choksi cover get so much love).
In exciting news, we are very, very close to summiting our goal of 2,000 print subscribers for the year. Currently, we’re sitting on 1,981, and so we have a special offer for newsletter readers today – and only for today. If you sign up now, you will get Issue 14 straight away, and also Issue 13, Issue 11 and Issue 10. So that’s seven magazines for the price of four. And bear in mind that the cost of shipping for EU and American subscribers has been slashed by a fiver (and that the pound is still pitifully weak). If you’ve already paid your way, and you’d like us to stand on top of the world, surveying a Himalayan vista, then why not share our appeal here, and get us over the line.
To business. We’ve got our 20 favourite articles of the year (standby for some highly biased choices), a tribute to Shane Warne and Pelé, but first, we’re taking the 214 through TopJaw.
The Real Ale Society
Have you heard of TopJaw? No, neither had we, until ten days ago, when this video lit up our corner of the internet – it follows a pair of YouTubers in their early thirties visiting a number of North London gastropubs, which sounds harmless enough, but allow us to direct you to this 16-second clip, so you can really blind yourself with the full glare of the TopJaw beam, as two drunk public schoolboys scoff their faces in Giles Coren’s favourite pub, The Bull and Last, stopping to appraise ‘the naughtiest looking terrine’ as a dish full of ‘rustic madness’. And now, after that, you can go and watch the whole video.
TopJaw are, on first viewing, unlikely advocates for some honest pints in a boujie boozer just off the Holloway Road. Jesse Burgess is a former male model turned candy impresario turned property developer. Will Warr is Prince William’s personal videographer. They are not the usual clientele at The Southampton Arms, NW5.
But it turns out this is not Jesse’s first bite at the cherry glacé that is television presenting. A reader points us in the direction of an almost-forgotten E4 series which follows a series of young human mannequins – including the-then 19-year-old Jesse, who takes his winning attitude and platinum bob off for a failed broadcast screentest, and then, in a separate clip, decries the ‘concrete crap’ of Milan while gazing out of a hotel window. He seems like such a nice guy!
Mortadella & Mozzarella
Some good news to balance the juju: the Old Compton Street delicatessen, I Camisa, has been given a two-year lease extension, and will not be shutting down, and we will continue to go there for tasty paninis on our lunch break (we also go to Bar Bruno, if you care for such information). But as Joy Lo Dico suggests in this piece, places like I Camisa can’t be frozen in aspic and expect to survive in a competitive retail market, when consumers are given such a lavish array of choices elsewhere. But it’s a welcome bit of news for those of us who enjoy Soho by day, and not just by night.
Vision After The Sermon
Like Gaguin, Misti Traya mixes her marmalade in the deepest shade of vermillion – and has written all about her travails with the good people at Dalemain, who run the world’s original marmalade awards. Misti has left the swaying palms of Los Angeles to live in the sturdy county of Kent, and if you are like her, and suffer through the brutish British weather, then you’ll find much to savour in her piece. And we can confirm that her marmalade is absolutely delicious – the editor’s mother has dispatched a jar this Christmas.
Our Friends in Hereford
An inquest into the conduct of the Special Air Service in the Afghanistan war has finally been ordered by the government. They are accused of committing war crimes, and these allegations have not yet been given the slightest tint of official scrutiny. But there is a fascinating background to this tale, which Mike Martin details in this thread here.
But why have the SAS been allowed to operate in an accountability-free zone? The Australians and the Americans don’t make so many exceptions. Two years ago, we published a piece from a military insider who has had extensive dealings with ‘The Blades’, and the implications made within the article make for compelling and disquieting reading.
Noel Edmonds’ House Party
Mr Blobby, that strange icon, is enjoying something of a comeback at the moment, for reasons that are difficult to fathom. Tom Nicholson has spoken to the original actors who donned the boggle-eyed latex suit and helped make Blobby a cultural mainstay in the 1990s. It’s a super piece of journalism that you can read here. (On a side note, did you know that Noel Edmonds has recently emigrated to New Zealand? Now you do.)
Top Drawer Material
One important thing about The Fence: we only publish about 20 percent of the content from the printed magazine on the website, and even though we operate on a quarterly schedule, that doesn’t stop us from pumping out pieces that have made a real impact online. So, in that spirit, we thought we’d share our most-read pieces of the year.
We kick off with Jimmy McIntosh’s first brandy-sodden dispatch, an evening at The Lighterman, the most isolated pub in London (and the pub is reopening in the new year, which is wonderful news for everyone). Next up is Harriet Rix’s bravura broadside on Guy Shrubsole’s book ( a side note: no one has ever taken a TF piece as badly as Guy, who is a left-wing activist and at the same time, a close personal friend of Ben Goldsmith).
In the bronze medal position is James Waddell’s investigation into Hilary Lawson’s Institute of Art and Ideas, a work of rigorous and vibrant journalism; in second place we have Ed Cumming’s free lunch at Quo Vadis.
And, in first place, we have our own series of inane questions to the largest minds on the planet, in which we asked Nobel Prize winners who the most beautiful person they have ever seen is, and how much is *too much* to spend on a bottle of wine.
Roll On 2023
There’s a lot of bonza reading there, and there’s been a lot of prime material here on the newsletter. Over 6,000 of you now receive it, and, at the same time, the open rate has increased to a cracking 59 percent this year. (A stat for the media nerds among you.)
Now, there are a solid rump of about 150-200 readers who’ve been taking this mail-out most weeks for two years who still haven’t upgraded to a print subscription. It would diminish us all to cast aspersions on these characters.
But if you number among this crowd, then we just need 19 of you freeloading rascals to subscribe and allow us to bring in the new year with our goals for the year crunched, our hearts full, and our editor with no reason to pester the rest of the team on WhatsApp until early January. The Fence, despite appearances to the contrary, is a wry, sprightly start-up, with just one full-time member of staff. We need your help to keep growing the project. Subscribe today.
O Jogo Bonito
It’s very sad to mark the passing of Pelé, who is very possibly the greatest footballer ever, and certainly the most legendary. You can watch this cute video of the Brazilian and Diego Maradona doing headers together here. But there was one sports icon whose loss still rankles, and will hurt for some time to come.
Like many of you, we grew up with Shane Warne on our screens. Warne was, as the Glaswegians have it, a ‘goodcunt’. Exuberantly talented; a fat and brylcreemed bully who managed to be devastatingly funny while being close friends with Chris Martin and Ed Sheeran; there will never be – and sometimes you need a cliché – someone quite like Warney.
Just look at this mural he commissioned in the study of his Melbourne home. There’s Jack Nicholson bringing in the six pack of beers, a topless Angelina Jolie – and Shane himself is explaining how to bowl the flipper to up-and-coming New Jersey spinner, Bruce Springsteen. It’s too pure for analysis; there’s nothing we can say apart from: R.I.P., S. K. Warne.
In Case You Missed It: Best of 2022
Californian prose queens Joan Didion and Eve Babitz shared an uneasy friendship – Lili Anolik has got unreleased letters from the archive in her piece for Vanity Fair.
Weetabix Games: Tom Stevenson schools the unlearned reader on the price of wheat, and how it underpins the global food crisis. It’s much more interesting than that sounds.
Sam Anderson writes movingly about his struggles with his weight for the NYT magazine.
A schoolboy prank that went right: Kieran Morris meets the professional footballer known as the ‘Honduran Maradona’.
Shantih Shantih Century: it’s 100 years since T.S Eliot’s The Wasteland was published – and Ryan Ruby’s essay is a laser-like reading of the modernist capstone.
Philip Larkin had an enormous penis. It’s a fact.
Published just three days ago, Luke Mogelson has dropped the piece of reportage everyone’s wanted to read: a dispatch from the furthest trenches of the Donbas.
Phoebe Greenwood shares some lessons from her dying therapist.
Imogen West-Knights spent eight days on a Gone Girl-themed cruise drifting down the Danube. Fun!
Written just after Kwasidämmerung, John Lanchester has the final word on Liz Truss.
Patrick Raden Keefe tracks a hacked-off CIA hacker with unlimited power and minimal personal skills. Watch out for the twist at the end…
John Oxley puts his finger on the crisis at the heart of the Conservative Party.
For Atavist Magazine, Cassidy Randall celebrates Susie Goodall’s 160 days at sea, as the 29-year-old to sail around the world all by herself.
Rebecca Williams is the exotic dancer who took down a white supremacy cell. Rolling Stone magazine have an interview with her.
Werner Herzog explains how a screenshot took on a life of its own to Séamas O’Reilly.
Evgenia Peretz documents the true lies of Elisabeth Finch, who pretended to have cancer to score plum TV writing jobs.
Jean West interviews the group of retirees who have spent more than 20 years building a World War One biplane in a shed in Scotland. (This article is definitely going to be made into a film, not a very good one, though, which is a shame).
At the court of King Trump: Jemima Kelly travels to Mar-a-Lago, where The Donald still reigns supreme.
As you will be aware, tens of thousands of people cross the English Channel in tiny boats every year. John Phipps speaks to the Kentish community who try to save them, while ignoring the tabloid headlines and grandstanding politicians.
Huw Lemmey visits a sauna, in tribute to the passing of Her Majesty the Queen.
And Finally
In honour of a country we are not allowed to be rude about (we have three subscribers there!), allow us to share with you a 1960s’ short in which a roving reporter tours the bars of Sydney, asking one simple question: ‘what is the easiest way to get in a fight in an Australian bar?’
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That’s it for the year. We hope you’ve enjoyed our work – thank you in particular to all the people who have helped us out this year with advice and practical help – you know who you are, and we’re very grateful indeed (we might do a tear-sodden speech next year, but not this time around). And thank you to everyone who has supported TF this year. It’s an honour to have your audience.
Now, it’s been a long old slog this December – there’s only one of us on desk duty, and Alex Christian has been manning the distribution hub while battling illness and a full-time job. So, we’re going to have a week off, and join you again on 9 January. If you have any questions about missing magazines, or any administrative matters regarding articles or invoices, please do reply to this email and we’ll get it sorted promptly. There are some very exciting things in the pipeline for 2023. And we’ll tell you about them soon: in the meantime, we wish you all the best for the new year. Until the next time.
TF
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