Dear Readers,
Good afternoon, and welcome to Off The Fence, a weekly mail-out that looks to bring you some small crumbs of joy at the start of every week. As we mentioned last time, we’re packing out the Instagram grid with articles three times a week, and there are even a few photos of staff members looking shifty and unhappy on the stories, too. You can follow all the action here.
There is genuine, actual work happening too: we’re starting to finesse the texts for Issue 15, and it will be released, after the usual design additions, in the middle of April. The website is being completely redeveloped – a reminder that a foreboding paywall will soon be implemented, and if you want to keep reading The Fence, then you need to subscribe today. So, as you can see, it’s ‘all go’ around here, but that doesn’t mean we’re scrimping on the newsletter front. Oh no. We’ve got another bevy of treats lined up for you, some stuff from Soho, a bit about Sondheim, and yes, continuing this alliterative roll, a haunting video of Sam Smith (but not that one). But we start with a bit about cabbage fields.
The Lincolnshire Poacher
News that Boston is part of the least ‘Bregretful’ constituency in the country has meant that journalists have trekked up on the LNER (changing at Grantham) to find Meaning and Purpose in the town’s high street. Pity the poor put-upon townsfolk, and the endless, endless vox-pops.
If you’ve spent time in Boston, you will recognise much in this dispatch by Jacob Furedi, in what is a fluently written state-of-the-nation piece. But why is the town so Brexity, so murderous, so obese and so depressed? Many reasons, but one above all else: low wages. And why are these wages so low?
One of the poorest towns in the UK, Boston’s economy is powered in the fertile Fens around the town; it’s some of the most expensive arable land in the country, and it’s to these fields and factories that migrant labour has been drawn at great controversy.
Famously, infamously even, this is because employers are, in their telling, handicapped by an ‘inability to recruit from the local population.’ This was a statement from Staples Vegetables, one of the biggest landowners in the area, which was picked up by the Daily Mail in 2014. (Regarding their ability to pay competitive wages to the local population, Staples Vegetables Limited’s returns at Companies House make for interesting reading.)
There’s a bigger story here than impoverished immigrants leading lives of grinding poverty. We hope that some outlet takes it up.
Under Jack Spot’s Shadow
The Old Fogey Brigade like to claim that ‘Soho is dead’ – albeit from a safe distance. But as ever, they couldn’t be more wrong: there’s quite the recherché atmosphere around these parts. After a £10 million pivot to cabaret and dinner dancing, our nextdoor neighbours at The Windmill have applied for a sex club licence. Last week, Greek Street was tapered off all day, after someone was hospitalised in a fight. And the week before that some poor unlucky soul was crushed to death by a telescopic urinal on Charing Cross Road.
It’s genuinely quite menacing walking around the neighbourhood at the moment, and not in a quirky, ‘authentic’ way – just in a straight-up menacing way. Crime is returning to pre-pandemic levels.
A fringe benefit? The crowds might be kept away from Jugemu, a tiny Japanese restaurant on Winnett Street that has scored the ravest of rave reviews from Tim Hayward over at the pink pages.
We have been meaning to write about the place for a while, but now, thankfully, Tim has done the job for us. But allow us to point out that Jugemu doesn’t just serve omakase, you can also choose from the sushi and sashimi menu, and spend £40 per head for ‘the best Japanese food in London’. There really is nowhere else like it.
Over the road on Old Compton Street, Gerry’s have got an unbelievably delicious Primitivo for £9.99. We genuinely challenge you to find a more delicious bottle of red wine in London for the same price.
Sub? Optimal!
Before the end of the month we’ll be unveiling our brand new website. It will be bold, brash and beautiful but will also mark the end of unlimited free content unless you have bravely, cleverly and preemptively purchased a subscription (which, after all, is a steal at a mere £30 per year). If you’re enjoying our content then beat the paywall now by clicking here.
Smithian Growth
Sam Smith is back in the news after a Satan themed performance at the Grammy awards ceremony, which appeared to have been costumed by precinct discount brand Wilko and choreographed by someone with REM sleep behaviour disorder, was denounced as ‘evil’ by Zodiac Killer suspect and offspring of a possible JFK assassin, Senator Ted Cruz. In light of this, we couldn’t help but share this exceptional behind the scenes footage of the making of one of Smith’s videos. Enjoy.
Cabinet Of Horrors
This morning, the world (AKA the UK’s eighteen professional lobby journalists) woke up to the news that Rishi Sunak was launching a mini-cabinet-reshuffle and greeted it with about as much enthusiasm as he himself appears to have undertaken the process.
Greg Hands took Zahawi’s pew as Minister of State For Trade Policy, Grant Shapps rolled his large toddler’s head over to Energy, and Michelle Donelan was shipped to that one ministry that’s basically ‘Science, Etc’. With the admitted exception of new Deputy Chair of the Conservative Party, ‘30p’ Lee Anderson – a walking gaffe whose only qualifications for high office seem to be a) having a marrow-deep contempt for the British public and b) a deep love of sharing it. That aside, it was all quite dull. A deeply unpopular government recycling the backwash of ten years of Tory rule.
It got us wondering which of the current cabinet crop have had the most appointments in that time. Luckily, friend of the Fence and illustrator extraordinaire Alex Christian crunched some numbers.
‘Shapps is on eight roles in Government” he wrote, ‘which is the same as Big Sam’s record number of Premier League teams managed. Hands is on six (same as second-placed Mark Hughes), although he’s had a very Darren Ferguson/Posh relationship with the role of Minister of State for Trade Policy (three spells). Heaton-Harris is on 7, Cleverley on 8, while Raab is on eight too, although he may soon find himself off the ministerial merry-go-round… Steve Barclay is on a whopping nine different positions, all since July 2016, and Penny Mordaunt is on the same number. But I reckon it’ll be hard to beat the King of [redacted] himself, Nadhim Zahawi, who brought up the big 1-0 when he was appointed Party Chairman last year.’
Well done to Alex, who has earned himself a foaming pint of nut brown ale, redeemable next time he sees us in the parliamentary canteen. If you’d like a much more captivating coterie of cabinet crackpots, our latest issue has put some of our all-timers in a handy Parliamentary Freaks XI that put each of the above to shame.
In Case You Missed It
For Chicago Magazine, Elly Fisher pens an absorbing profile of John Becker, physician to the world’s most expensive violins.
The Guardian’s Jennifer Rankin charts the course of Kiruna, the Swedish town that’s moving two miles east of itself.
On her Substack, Chloe Combi writes one of the more measured and sober takes on the new hegemony of porn.
Annabel Ross investigates why the Grammies just can’t get dance music right, for Mixmag.
Rani Baker asks an important question about the 1983 Video Game Crash: Did it actually happen?
And Finally
The Christmas newsletter drought meant that we failed to mark the first anniversary of Stephen Sondheim’s death. To call the man who wrote the lyrics of West Side Story aged twenty six a legend of musical theatre would be stating the obvious and so it was a delight to be reminded of this story involving the composer’s final days, unfairly handsome actor Jonathan Bailey and the play COCK.
Perhaps our favourite Sondheim moment, however, is his ‘duelling pianos’ tribute to West End impresario Sir Cameron Mackintosh found at about one minute into the video. Come for Sondheim’s astonishing skills as a pianist even in old age, stay for Andrew Lloyd Webber’s notable lack of the same, and then come back again and again for the blissful vulgarity of the noble Lord’s delivery of the line ‘what, richer than me?’
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That’s it for this week, and we look forward to joining you next Monday, next Tuesday, it’s going to be one of those, but we don’t know which one yet. If you would like to talk to a member of the editorial team, then reply to this email and we’ll get back to you promptly – we’re happy to discuss most things. Until the next time.
All the best,
TF
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