Dear Readers,
Good afternoon, and welcome back to Off The Fence, a newsletter that doesn’t wince in sunlight.
We begin this week by thanking everyone who has applied for our editorial assistant positions. It has been wonderful to see so many talented applications coming in, and our only regret is that we can take just two from an impressive shortlist. Once more, we thank those of you who supported us in the fighting fund that allowed us to do this – here’s a reader enjoying picking up their prize from the office just this very morning.
We are making bold new efforts to make this newsletter the most vibrant mail-out in the country. For those of you who are signed up, it has been wonderful to see the open rate touching 50% once more. Do make sure that it hasn’t been relegated to your ‘spam’ folder.
We also take the time to recommend our other newsletter offering, Capital Letter. Our hope is that you come out not just with some great recommendations of things to do, eat and see in London, but also a fresh perspective on this great, shifting city. From the next issue, we will also be featuring more exciting dispatches, so be sure to subscribe to catch them.
The photos have really been flooding in this week in that only really exciting winter Olympic event: the race for the Michael Bubblé. There have been some expected finds, namely waiting for a train at St Pancrasand engulfing the wall display at Good News. But the precocious little issue has been scampering all over the globe; finding itself at The Met in the Big Apple, and also on the beach in New Zealand and overlooking a mountain range in Chile.
And for those of you who somehow still lack a magazine subscription, we offer another tantaliser from our box of tricks. Ten more tokens have now been struck for a sumptuous 15% off a sub at checkout. That’s print, digital or both, and applies to gift subscriptions. But do move fast.
This week, we’ve got something new about a Birmingham story the whole world’s interested in.
Butting In
Political candidates, especially in recent years, can have questionable resumes, but one recent local candidate has been catching the media’s eye on this front. Shahid Butt is a man who spent five years in jail for conspiring to bomb the British consulate in Yemen, an Anglican church and a hotel. He’s now standing as an independent in Birmingham Council’s elections on May 7.
The cause of his jail stint goes back to 1999 and to Abu Hamza, the infamous hook-handed Finsbury Park preacher, for whom Butt was a clerical worker. The attack failed, and Butt and his co-conspirators were arrested, with Hamza revealed as the mastermind behind the plan. In an effort to free Butt and his comrades, Hamza, who is now serving life without parole in ADX Florence, Colorado, staged a botched kidnapping which resulted in the death of several hostages (including three British tourists).
It is certainly a hell of a background for a man running in local British elections, and Butt has been keen to downplay his journey from fighting skinheads on the streets of Birmingham in his youth to fighting on the side of radical Islam in Bosnia, and Afghanistan. This is hardly surprising given that Butt seeks to present himself as a respected elder of the community, someone with a cool head. Indeed, Butt has spent time on the Prevent board and often emphasises a redemption arc, claiming he has left his violent self behind him. All the same, there seems to be something of the old fighting spirit in him, as this video of Butt going to work on a punching bag suggests.
These jihadi roots have been covered recently in much of the press, most notably his quoting of a famous passage of the Qur’an that ‘Allah says in the Koran do not take the Jews or Christians as your friends and protectors’. It’s a shameful thing for Butt to have said, not least because the Qur’an itself offers many, far better, passages to quote, such as: ‘Do not argue with the People of the Book [Jews and Christians] unless gracefully, except with those of them who act wrongfully. And say, “We believe in what has been revealed to us and what was revealed to you. Our God and your God is only One.’ (29:46)
What hasn’t been reported is what Butt’s business career (post-jihad). An analysis of his filings by The Fence shows a string of his failed companies, including a hardware store and a housing association, which went into liquidation owing £130,000 to banks, £19,000 to HMRC, as well as over £100,000 to others, including British Gas and Shopify. So we can only wonder where the money for the lovely car he does his TikToks in came from.
Some other business connections of Mr Butt are even less reputable than these debt-riddled failings. Birmingham Live noted that Shah had also been linked to the debt-riddled dealings of Saira Butt (no relation), whose Midlands Living C.I.C. collapsed in a puff of what administrators called ‘Threats, arson and lies’ and its own share of £12.25m worth of debt to boot. Butt told Birmingham Live that he had several business meetings with Ms Butt but had decided not to support her enterprises.
Come May 7, the challenger chosen to face off for the election is none other than Sharon Osbourne. Free now from keeping an eye on the much-missed Ozzy, she is considering diving feet first into the nation’s most contentious local election. The offer came from the leader of the local Conservative councilor Robert Alden, who wrote her an open letter. His sentiment was not without its own questionable undertones: ‘If Sharon would like to help us clean up Birmingham, just give us a call.’
Is That a Dolphin in a Bathtub?
We’ve got an absolute crackerjack of an insider piece from Matt Nida just live on the website. For over 15 years, Matt worked as a producer on telly’s least-loved genre: the panel show, and here he pens an obituary for a format that is frequently blamed for Boris Johnson’s rise to power, a thesis with which we are in polite disagreement.
We’ve got space for a similar piece in the upcoming issue, so if you have worked in a job or an industry that is misunderstood or misrepresented in the media, then we’d love to hear from you at editorial@the-fence.com and we’ll get back to you.
Lashings of Samphire
We won’t embarrass them by outing them here, but we have had two absolute legends of the game privately praise Ian Trueger’s long-read on how private equity reshaped the UK’s restaurant scene since Nigel Lawson sparked The Big Bang. Tuck in here.
Waltzing Down Charlotte Street
If you’re in town, there is no better menu formule than the set option at the Noble Rots – 3 courses for £29 at lunch – but if you’re on the look-out for something more glitzy, then we recommend a trip to Pied à Terre in Fitzrovia, where they’re offering a menu for an unbelievable £35 to celebrate 35 years in the game, and it is wonderful to see founder David Moore working the room four decades in. Treat yourself to a Michelin-starred day out.
Here Comes the Sun
Looking over the weather predictions at the moment is a little glum. Things are, apparently, set to go colder again, and there doesn’t seem to be hopes of The Grey disappearing soon. But in these times, it is always helpful to indulge yourself in a little laugh at the expense of others, namely those attending raves in Southeast Asia to ‘escape it all’. The weather may be warmer there, but we know where we’d rather be. So here are three videos to help stave off the gloom.(The last one should be used in PSHE lessons.)
In Case You Missed It
In the wake of John Phipps’ excellent piece about quitting smoking, we return to a 1959 issue of Caper Magazine to find out what kind of smoker we are.
The Houghington Post returns to interview Marina Hyde on the Epstein Files.
Oli Dugmore harnesses the power of a collared shirt to deliver the finest Question Time performance in recent years.
Some top-tier Lincolnshire journalism from Jacob Furedi.
This short video about a recently deceased French clown master is everything you expect and more.
Gaze upon Paul Muldoon and Jean Hanff Korelitz’s intimidatingly tasteful home. Are there any living writers doing it quite like this?
Inside Nicky Haslam and Nadine Dorries’ unlikely friendship.
And Finally
We have another excellent musical offering for you to round off this week’s newsletter. It is the wonderful Jim E. Brown, a musician and self-styled ‘19-year-old Brit pop sensation’ who is making music for our strange modern times. His sound is a kind of parody of 80s indie music, with lots of heavy synth work (on songs likeI Urinated On A Butterfly) and some nice jangly guitars on the slower numbers, like I Know I’m Going To Die of A Stroke.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ij0LZWTPvPU
Possibly our favourite, and it’s a niche one so you can lord it over your basic friends, is the wonderfully titled Help! I Swallowed A Button Battery!It’s a perfect case of Brown’s essence: a sad man wailing over upbeat music, as he’s eaten a battery because ‘I thought it was a candy! I was hungry!’. The classic texts are, however, the excellent Every Time I Speak I Regret It Immensely and I’m Quitting Prozac to Continue Drinking.
Showing a keen understanding of the modern music world, which demands not only that you make music but that you build a ‘personality’ for fans to adore alongside it, Jim E. Brown has also been busy creating his own fascinating character. He openly labels himself an obese alcoholic, detests ‘vegetable matter’ and directly contradicts his never-changing 19-year-old status by claiming he was born ‘one day before the 9/11’. He’s had a great opportunity to expand this character in his recent interview on the American video-podcast Office Hours Live.
We do warn you, though, that extensive listening may briefly ruin your ability to enjoy other music. You will find other instrumentation listless, other lyricists coy and weak in their refusal to face the reality of Life. You will also, no matter the genre, be waiting expectantly for someone to intone, ‘My name is Jim E. Broowwwwn…’
That’s all for this week! We do hope you’re enjoying the more investigative bent of these recent newsletters. The arrival of Issue 27 will start to become the headline soon, but for now, if you’ve had any problems with your 26, do reach out to us at support@the-fence.com. Do remember that we have ten subscriptions at a cut price left too. Otherwise, we look forward to speaking to you again next week.
All the best,
TF