Dear Readers,
Good afternoon and welcome back to a suitably refreshed Off The Fence, a newsletter assembled by the staff behind The UK’s Only Magazine.
And while we’re at it, good news: Issue 25 is done. No, you can’t see it yet, but the beautiful thing has been buffed, polished and finalised, before wending its merry way over the frigid Baltic to our printers in Estonia. More details anon.
Issue 24 has had a quiet, contemplative fortnight, making a pilgrimage to Iona Abbey, taking in the natural beauty of El Capitanand (presumably) putting its feet up inside a gorgeous Fence tote in sunny Sicily. We have no idea where this snap was taken – any help? And here’s a fantastic reviewette from New York City celebrating our design vision, which is always nice to see and hear.
Capital Letter is entering a new era – we detailed the worst wine lists in London a few outings ago, and on Thursday, we welcome the return of our favourite anonymous critic, ‘Secret Chef’, who has put down the pans and taken up the pen once more. You won’t want to miss it – sign up here.
Now then, now then; after a fortnight’s break, we are back with brio. Upon our lathe of heaven this week, we have blind card sharks, apian sex cults and A-listers in the Cotswolds, if that’s alright with you. Let’s get to it.
Nights at the Roundtable
Chief among the British reactions to Charlie Kirk’s passing was this trip down memory lane from an old friend of OTF, John Mappin, owner of Tintagel hotel/freaknest Camelot Castle, and host of an evening with Kirk and Candace Owens way back in 2018. In the week since his killing, Owens has become one of his most ardent eulogisers, a fact which Musk’s misfiring AI, Grok, has yet to be made aware of. The Camelot proprietor takes particular pride in this being the event at which Owens met her future husband George, son of Tory peer Michael, Farmer. Who said Arthurian romance was dead?
A glance through Mappin’s feed from the event may remind you of his appearances in these pages before, but there’s a 2-for-1 deal for the more eagle-eyed readers, in this shot.
Featuring as it does, Kirk sandwiched between Mappin and one Ciro ‘Pomodoro’ Orsini, the pizzeria owner you might recall from Margaret Mitchell’s sterling piece, ‘If You Can’t Beauchamp, Join ‘Em’, in Issue 20. The connections, as they say, are everywhere, for those with eyes to see.
Beehive Yourself
If a man told you to drink urine and spend hours moving in a frenzied figure of eight in order to follow in the path of a long-line of ancient Welsh bee shamans, would you?
Issue 24 has been leading a busy life and – how the time flies – it will soon be time to start turning our minds and eyes to its successor. For now, we can proudly celebrate that all of our facts and features from the issue have now made their way online for your digital viewing pleasure.
This is because Mattha Busby’s investigation into Simon Buxton, the man who managed to achieve the unlikely feat of getting a ‘yes’ to our earlier question, has now been published online. You can read this incredible tale of a lucrative honeycomb of lies here.
One Man’s Trash
Regular readers of this newsletter will know all about Garbage Day, US culture writer Ryan Broderick’s thrice-weekly mailout of all things online. As long-term fans of Broderick and co’s output, we’ve highlighted their work a number of times, not least in a few ad swaps over the years. This, however, is no such quid pro quo; just some unalloyed praise for the best writing about the internet found anywhere right now, at a time when it’s never been more needed.
Garbage Day has released three newsletters since the killing of Charlie Kirk last week – here, here and here – and each is essential reading. During a week which has seen Kirk’s ideological bedfellows foment a civil war in his name while the entire mainstream media stumbles over itself to comprehend the motive, meaning or mission of the shooter, it’s never been clearer that internet comprehension is in a sorry state.
It’s sad, and more than a little horrifying, that people who cover politics and media now need to be well-versed in far-right internet forum drama. But that does not make it any less true.
Could Have Bought a Place in DUMBO Before It Was DUMBO
Did you know that Beyoncé and Jay-Z are moving to the English countryside? It sounds too ridiculous to be true, but America’s First Couple have genuinely made a purchase in West Oxfordshire, as the area inches closer to raising the stars and stripes atop its flagpole. It’s been widely reported that the patch they’ve bought is, in fact, 58 acres of land in Wigginton, which is not technically in the Cotswolds, as we’re sure the AONB-keepers among you have noted. The land, supposedly, consists of a ‘derelict shack and an algae-filled lake’. What potential.
This is where it gets interesting. According to our immaculately placed rural sources, the land was sold recently for only £500,000, before being flipped for £1 million, and then £3 million, before being sold to Jigga Man and Bey for £8 million. A Hook Norton state of mind? Some puns present themselves.
An Honest Boozer
Meanwhile, our new book, ThePub, continues to rock shelves up and down this odd little island. Bookshops have been in such a clamour for their copy that our wholesalers have (temporarily) run dry. Not half-bad for a gift book launched in the dog days of summer, wouldn’t you say? We’ve been delighted with reader feedback so far, with a good share of you taking a copy to your local as the good lord intended. Read, drink and be merry – Sober October is weeks away yet.
For those of you in the capital, our editor-in-chief, Charlie Baker, is giving a talk at the Walmer Castle in Notting Hill about all things pub-related. It’s next Tuesday and there are only a few tickets left.
Golden Slumbers
Saturday saw the centre of London heave with menace, as Tommy Robinson’s ‘Unite the Kingdom’ rally brought a coterie of pissed-up wrong’uns to agitate for race war on the capital’s streets. Doubtless, you will have seen something in the news from the headline act – the odious Saffa whose name we won’t bother to type out – but peer further down the card, and you’ll find plenty more homegrown weirdos worth a brief examination.
Take this guy, Pastor Rikki Doolan: the musical preacher from Middlesbrough who claims to have brought Robinson to Christ during his sixth and most recent stay at His Majesty’s pleasure. Doolan has been a priest without a parish on the British far-right for years now, having been laughed out of Patriotic Alternative for the dual crimes of cringiness and miscegenation. But like so many of his fellow travellers on stage, he is, to his bones, a scammer. A close associate of the Zimbabwean pastor-diplomat, Uebert Angel, Doolan was implicated in a 2023 Al Jazeera sting which outlined the pair’s state-sanctioned gold smuggling & money laundering operation.
As you might tell, these revelations led nowhere and both Angel and Doolan remain hilariously unprosecuted. At least we can enjoy Doolan being caught asking about the mechanics of laundering money with the naïve precocity of a curious six-year-old: ‘It’s a big washing machine, right?’
Before the Year Is Up
Now, there may be hot days in the weeks ahead, but our winter issue is coming together beautifully. There is a special theme, which will remain a secret for the time being (we’ve learned our lesson here), and there are only a few slots remaining in the flatplan. If you’d like to be part of the Christmas outing then please do have a read of the pitch guide here and send through a pitch to editorial@the-fence.com.
We are mustard keen for pieces in either the ‘Facts’ section, or in ‘Etc’, and are, as ever, very keen for insider pieces – if you work in an industry that is misunderstood or misrepresented, then we would love to hear from you.
In Case You Missed It
Legendary journalist Christo Grozev on thelanguage of Kremlish.
Jessica Reed Kraus is the new darling of RFK Jr’s insane MAHA movement.
Eternal meme Bob Katter ‘recharges the aquifers of his soul’ by reading his own autobiography.
TheGray Lady says your star sign is out of date.
Staying transatlantic, managing editor Kieran Morris popped up on This American Life last week, once again atoning for his childhood lies.
And Finally
Where would we be without close-up magicians? Our children’s birthday parties, arid and joyless. Our cruises, denuded of wonder. Our school reunions, devoid of that one guy in your year who always wore a hat. Thankfully, the TikTok age of quick content has provided an ever-ready sluice of new shiny-waistcoated fellows for each and every day of the week. Rebuffing their advances, we’ve discovered a magician of a slightly older vintage this week, Richard Turner, perhaps the finest close-up card shark we’ve encountered since the untimely passing of Ricky Jay.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TwFIJyWKs1k
Turner’s most famous appearance was probably on Penn & Teller’s talent/challenge show Fool Us, where he did, in fact, fool them. He did this without actually doing any trick per se, because rather than a magician, Turner is known as a card mechanic. He fixes the cards, using an insane degree of dexterity to exercise total manipulation over the deck, all while seemingly following casino procedure for a fair deck.
What takes this from an impressive stage performance to a preposterous degree of talent, is that Richard Turner is completely blind and has been since birth. Throw in the fact that he’s also a black belt in karate and his achievements venture toward the ludicrous. Below you’ll find a fuller performance, as well as a discussion of his life, that he offered a room full of MIT boffins, should you be in the market for some deeper magical cuts on this windy afternoon.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qyV8Xw9TscA
That’s it for this week, we hope you didn’t miss us too sorely while we were attending to ourselves this past fortnight (stop giggling). We’ll be back with another prompt outing next Tuesday. Remember to send pitches to editorial@the-fence.com and all other questions to support@the-fence.com. You can, as ever, buy a mag, bag or subscriptions here. Frogs swallow food by retracting their eyeballs to push meals down their throats. Speak soon.
All the best,
TF