Dear Readers,
Welcome to the latest edition of Off the Fence, our fortnightly newsletter-slash-propaganda arm. We launched Issue 5 last week and there are already only 70 copies left (which you can purchase here). We’re expanding this newsletter (and if you have been relishing it, please do recommend it to your friends, who can sign up on the dotted line on our website).
To business: last week, we looked at our own homegrown oligarch, Joe Lewis. This time, we begin by looking at a fugitive Indian billionaire holed-up from justice in a Hertfordshire mansion.
The King of Good Times
Vijay Mallya inherited his father’s company, United Spirits, at the age of 28. He then proceeded to expand: he moved the headquarters to Bangalore, he pushed his brands – Kingfisher Beer, McDowell’s No. 1 Whisky, McDowell’s No. 1 Brandy – and started to make a fortune in 1990s India as the ‘License Raj’ of Nehru’s Congress party receded, and as a culture which has always prided itself on abstinence gave in to liquid temptation.
But billions weren’t enough for Vijay: he dreamed of a conglomerate, of global reach. So, he set up an airline, Kingfisher Airlines, in 2003. He bought another loss-making airline, Air Deccan, in 2007. And as this wonderfully titled documentary relays, he involved himself (despite having minimal experience) in the fantastically challenging business of turning planes into profit. His ideas were, of course, ridiculous: increasing the number of first-class seats on domestic flights (lobsters and champagne on the house).
And the inevitable happened: Kingfisher Airlines incinerated money like jet fuel. No salaries were paid for 15 months. A pilot’s wife committed suicide in protest. Kingfisher Airlines were branded ‘wilful defaulters’ by their biggest lender, the State Bank of India. Vijay’s response? To throw a three-day bash for his 60th birthday in Goa, where he was serenaded by Enrique Iglesias.
Cut national outrage. Arrests warrants were issued by courts in Mumbai and Hyderabad, but Vijay had fled to London in March 2016, where like many super-rich Indians, he has long maintained multiple residences, and where his son, Siddharth, a vain playboy, was educated.
For the last four years, Vijay’s case has been in and out of British courts as he resists extradition. In July of this year, Mallya offered a settlement package of around $2 billion. This has been rejected by his lenders. And this is where it gets baffling: at the start of this month, the Indian Ministry of External Affairs commented that the case cannot be resolved until the resolution of a ‘secret legal matter’ between the United Kingdom and India.
This ‘secret’ has not been commented on in the British press, but the case, even amid the coronavirus, is dominating the news in India, where there have been accusations of the old colonial power engaging in yet more meddling. Could Her Majesty’s Government have legitimate concerns about human rights under Modi’s government? Mallya is not the first Indian oligarch-fugitive to hunker down in Britain. Earlier this year, Yes Bank executive Rana Kapoor was lured back to Mumbai, where he was summarily arrested.
We eagerly await further developments in the case. For now, it is a vivid illustration of how London has come to be the world centre of dirty money: the place to hide it and the place to hide with it.
Dear Limey Assholes
Everyone knows an American politics bore: bleating on about gerrymandered Florida districts, discoursing on Robert Caro, reminiscing about their memories of 9/11 (which they watched as a nine-year-old boy, from a sofa in Oxfordshire). Obviously, America’s slip-slide into not-that-far-from-fascism is big, relevant news, but still: there’s little we can do to stop it here in Blighty. (For the record, The Fence endorses Joe Biden.)
Anyway, here’s one from the archives that always makes us laugh. In 2004, The Guardian encouraged their readers to write to the undecided voters of Clark County, in the swing state of Ohio. Needless to say, the responses are worth reading, many of them centering around some fairly foundational aspects of American history.
Laurence Sterne Rides Again
The Fence is indebted to the Bishop of Kensington: TF stalwart the Rev. Fergus Butler-Gallie will be joining the clergy team at Holy Trinity, Sloane Square from this Advent Sunday. Fergus is one of the finest comic minds in the country, so we couldn’t be happier that he’ll be blessing us with his talents on a more frequent basis.
Fergus has written some of our funniest articles; from a conceit in which he compares London train stations to serial killers, to an imagined email chain in which the hapless scrivener Benjamin Disraeli harangues editors for a byline, to the clerical diaries of a fictional Stoke Newington parson. If, this Christmas, you are looking for a stocking-filler for an amusing uncle or ludic godchild then let us direct you to Fergus’s first book: A Field Guide to the English Clergy. (If you want your book to receive this kind of blue-chip plug in future newsletters, consider writing for The Fence.)
Chris Morris Gets on the Pints
In our previous newsletter we sung the praises of the dark comic sky-god Chris Morris. This past Thursday, your correspondent was enjoying a socially distant lager in the back garden of the Trinity Arms, SW9. Looking to the left, they saw at the adjacent table none other than Chris Morris himself, supping a drink with a companion. We resisted the urge to hassle him, turning to our own companion and whispering ‘Look, that’s Chris Morris!’.
‘The cricketer? I thought he was playing in the IPL in Dubai?’ came the response from our not-unworldly friend. In the London mediasphere, Chris Morris is as close to a living deity as it gets. But outside it, he’s just another bloke in the pub.
Nice N’ Sleazy
Yes, it’s not been a great day for the Labour leadership. But this report into the cronyism and clientelism of the Conservative party really makes for staggering reading. As an anonymous backbench Tory MP says, ‘They are so corrupt… which I almost wouldn’t mind if they weren’t so crap at it’. Within the article, Peter Geoghegan lists seven to eight stories of governmental malfeasance that in the not-so-distant-past would have made front-page news.
In the last six months, we’ve been contacted by two sources: one providing documented evidence of a new-intake MP lying to the Electoral Commission; the other, well, it’s a massive story. We don’t really know what to do with it.
Now, we’re not trying to do a ‘Gerald Ratner’ on our growing project… but we’re a quarterly magazine with a print run of 500. We have 1841 followers on Twitter. We have no full-time members of staff. And yet these stories – big national interest stories – are falling into our lap. Critics of the media claim that the Fourth Estate is increasingly toothless, shorn of the big budgets required to maintain a healthy body politic. Yet it seems that we may be in almost the opposite situation: the British establishment is so gleefully corrupt that there is almost no point in listing its excesses. They are too numerous to record, let alone to report.
NOT THE BEES!!!!!
Nicholas Cage, born Nicholas Coppola, is one of the last great madmen in Hollywood. In between playing lunatics / playing as himself, he has blown a fortune on a series of deliciously absurd purchases (such as $726,000 dollars on a stolen Mongolian dinosaur skull).
Now, facing relative penury, he divides his time, in immutably perfect contradiction, between Las Vegas and Austenland. He has a cottage just outside Bath, where he’s quite the local celebrity.
Here he is visiting a hospital in a heart-warmingly bonkers clip (‘I love all children; I love babies). And there’s this video of him turning on the Bath Christmas lights in what can only be described as a typical Nicholas Cage performance (‘CITIZENS OF BATH… CITIZENS OF SOMERSET… I CAN FEEL THE ELECTRICITY COURSING THROUGH MY VEINS!’)
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That’s the lot for this week. If you would like to get in touch with us, you can do so by replying to this email. We do always like to hear from our readers, so do drop us a line. We’re putting Issue 6 through design, and it will be with you all in early December. It’s shaping up to be the best issue yet (but we would say that).
All the best,
TF
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