Dear Readers,
Good afternoon and welcome to Off The Fence, a sexy little newsletter from The Fence magazine.
We write to you while still deep in the trenches of our competition to find the best and most beautiful photo of Issue 22. Here is the magazine in Goa, and that’s just for starters. We have just received one snap from a picturesque but cloudy bridge in Firenze, which we're unsure if anyone can beat. However, we also ‘came to Brazil’, heeding our South American readers’ cries, and were papped with noted TikTok celebrity James ‘Jimmy Mac’ McIntosh, of London Dead Pubs fame no less. So competition is fierce.
If you'd like to join the fray, please send us an email showcasing your photo skills to editorial@the-fence.com, or tag us on Twitter, Bluesky, Instagram, wherever you get your social media fix these days.
The winner for sexiest little snap of Issue 22 will receive, we remind you, a bottle of Bollinger Champagne.
If that wasn't generous enough, we bring you not just fizz but a saucy sale as well. If you sign up today for a print & digital subscription, we will send you, from our palatial Soho squat, a bonus tote, containing Issues 18, 19, 21 and 22. Click on the image of the sexy pintman below to get at it, or via the big orange-red button.
For now though, we tire of describing ourselves as sexy little things. Instead we bring you a newsletter filled with other sexy little things instead. Things like Amol Rajan's Instagram videos, P Diddy's art collection, and Republican make-up techniques.
Let's get it going with a banger off the Black Sea.
Dobry Den, Everybody
While Boris Johnson may be wildly unpopular in this country, his popularity in Ukraine far exceeds Tonibler levels. This 2022 release from the band MysusliUA – which we’re afraid really is a slammer – still plays in Kyiv nightclubs. Do have a listen here.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mfkiyoY8WRk
Despite his parlous performance on home territory, Johnson did galvanise Western support for Ukraine at the most critical juncture. It’s a matter of record that he supplied the Ukrainian forces with NLAW antitank missiles in January 2022, which were essential to defeating the onslaught of Russian armour a few months later. There is, we have been told by a number of sources, quite a few other things that he sanctioned which are yet to be reported, but which we imagine have something to do with the special forces.
The question is: will the heroically indiscreet Johnson say schtum about his heroic actions as Prime Minister? Putin’s forces are steadily encroaching across the oblasts, incinerating towns and villages as they go. The most palpable legacy of Johnson’s disgraceful tenure in Downing Street is being threatened. When is he going to write about it – and for whom?
Homer, You’ve Got It Set On Fascist
Is it fine for us to say that everyone at Donald Trump's election looked as though they'd prepared for the event with Homer Simpson's make-up gun invention? It's probably not, no. But then there's a reason why 'Republican make-up' has become a TikTok trend, so take a moment to consider that before you attack us. If you still think we are vile sexist pigs who have no right to comment on the right's obsession with 2016 baking, strobing and block-browing, then we offer you our winner of worst make-up of the inauguration as an apology.
Layers and layers of it, to the point that it made up a whole extra face. Not the Donald’s, nor the White House Correspondent, but that of President Milei. Looking like the embodiment of what would have happened if Disney-Pixar had accepted a commission from Milton Friedman, the Argentine President’s public facing persona and appearance are wacky enough. Up close, however, such is the quantity of slap he has smeared on his face that he apparently looks like Dame Barbara Cartland.
Get There Fast, Take It Slow
Over the weekend, our heads were collectively blown off by this BBC News report from Shwe Kokko on the Thai-Myanmar border. This strip of fiercely contested jungle has been transformed into a simulacrum of a medium-sized Chinese city, complete with nightclubs, casinos and restaurants – all built to traffic unsuspecting tech workers into forced labour in large-scale online gambling scams. Incredibly, the story only starts here.
The redevelopment of Shwe Kokko has come about through the Yatai International Holdings Group, who have designated the area as ‘Yatai New City’. The organisation’s leader, She Zhijiang, is omnipresent in Yatai New City, with clips of his vision for the area played on LED screens, in bars and out on the street. He is also locked away in Thai jail, wanted by the Chinese government for having operated casinos on the mainland, and purports to be a spurned Chinese spy cast adrift by his old employers.
Prior to his excommunication, She Zhijiang would claim that his work in Shwe Kokko was a formal part of China’s Belt and Road Initiative – something Beijing has since vehemently denied. With this, too, the Chinese state has pressured both countries to put an end to Shwe Kokko, with leaders in Bangkok & Yangon now cutting power and water off from the area. To mitigate this, She Zhijiang had relied on the feared local warlord, Col. Saw Chit Thu, to provide order, yet it now seems that the regional militia has now also fallen out with the Yatai group. This might go some way to explaining why the typically publicity-shy Chinese company is now inviting journalists for tours of the ghost town.
All of which is to say, if you (yes, you) are a reader in Southeast Asia and you want an easy commission, you know what to do: message editorial@the-fence.com and let’s get you over the strait.
Dead Air
The halcyon days of the TV newsman are sadly behind us. No more long lunches, no more fat ratings wars, no more fame and fortune. In an era of Netflix, TikTok and dwindling attention spans, TV no longer reigns supreme. In Issue 22, storied newshound Stephen Smith penned for us a eulogy in which he mourns the industry. Tune in here.
Stillmatic
Amol Rajan started out – not so long ago – as the protégé for Lord Lebedev. Then he became the editor of the Independent at the age of 29. What a talent. Now, he’s taken over on University Challenge and has won over the critics with a more ‘empathetic’ brand of broadcasting. He’s on the radio, too, as a presenter on Radio 4.
But it’s on Instagram where the media maven is making the most curious moves, posting unexciting clips of a Sunday lasagne here, and in this video, the Cantabrigian cringelord cruises down a north London street in a pair of aviators, claiming that Big L’s Put It On is ‘the greatest hip hop track of the 1990s, possibly ever.’ It’s time to bring back Paxman, we say.
The Appellation Trail
A fortnight ago, we pondered the most wondrous names we’d encountered and put out an appeal for the holder of a superlative soubriquet to get in touch. As of yet, we have not received a firsthand missive from the nominally gifted, but we have had some sterling accounts of names encountered by others. Charles B (no relation) spoke warmly of his time in the company of a man named Gary Pencil, while Dara O made mention of his one-time client Everton Fistlord.
Not to be beaten, however, was reader Graham Kelly, who brought both barrels to the challenge, submitting a marvellous medley of monikers he’s encountered, among them Dr Hugo Shakeshaft, Adele Geronimo and Norbert Jumperz.
If you can beat those - and, more pressingly, if you can do so with your own name – we remain, as ever, receptive to your contact via editorial@the-fence.com.
The Cost of Crime
For the last year, the price of postage has been steadily increasing, and as we’ve been selling more and more magazines, distribution is now our single biggest expenditure. How much does it cost us? You can find out the full figures in this interview between our editor and Patrick Galbraith on the Boundless podcast.
We’ve never raised the price of postage, but we are going to do so next week, only for single issue orders. So if you want to buy some of our back issues, now is the optimal time. There are only a handful of Issue 4 and Issue 14s left, so do move quickly if you want to score them.
In Case You Missed It
The Best Pub in Each English County, according to Will Hawkes, a sterling list for the most part, though the Bonchurch Inn isn’t the best pub in the Isle of Wight. That would be The Volunteer.
What is going to happen to P Diddy’s art collection? Those Tracey Emins haven’t made the trip to MDC Brooklyn’s Special Housing Unit.
A Foreign Office mandarin unmasks to lambast Whitehall and its reckless approach to international law.
Have you got a free afternoon? The Houston Chronicle has a six-part feature on the afterlife of guitarist Sterling Morrison, who walked out of The Velvet Underground in 1971 never to be heard from again.
A barnstormer from Abi Whistance on Laurence Westgaph, an unqualified academic and known abuser hired as the ‘Historian in Residence’ for Liverpool’s National Slavery Museum.
And Finally
Old documentaries are back on the menu this week, you’ll be delighted to know, but the backend of the BBC iPlayer goes neglected once again as we serve up this premier cut from the golden age of Hollywood. Chasen’s, at 9039 Beverly Boulevard in West Hollywood, was a legendary LA restaurant with a fantastical history, one that’s worth jimming up on ahead of the Academy Awards next month.
Beginning life as a barbecue shack funded by the truculent and capricious New Yorker editor, Harold Ross, the restaurant quickly found a place in the hearts of the glitterati as the original home of the Oscars afterparty. Elizabeth Taylor, so hooked on the restaurant’s fare, had vats of Chasen’s signature chili flown to Rome through the filming of Cleopatra. Another fan, little-known cowboy Ronald Reagan, preferred the boiled beef – he even went down on bended knee to Nancy in the Chasen’s booths, something of a role reversal for the future First Lady on the Sunset Strip.
After almost 40 years of serving distastefully rustic food to the great & good, Chasen’s closed up shop in 1995, a closure that moved directing pair Shari Springer Berman and Robert Pulcini to shoot their inaugural flick, Off the Menu: The Last Days of Chasen’s. Settle in for ribald dining anecdotes from David Frost, Bob Hope, Fay Wray, Martin Landau, Jack Lemmon and so, so many more.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FsFnsGXvTmk
A big thank you, once again, to whoever does the yeoman’s work of uploading old movies to YouTube – nurses should be giving their wages to you.
Aaaaaaaand, scene. That’s the Tuesletter dispatched for at least seven more days, and what a good one it was. If you agree, or violently disagree, please signal as such below. And if you need us for anything, you know how to reach us – editorial@the-fence.com. Buy a mag, buy a sub, buy a tote, all here. Catch you next week.
All the best,
TF