Dear Readers,
Good afternoon, and welcome to Off The Fence, a weekly newsletter that people have described as ‘spicy’. We do wish that it would be regarded as ‘sultry’, too, but Substack is not the most winsome of websites. Such is life.
But as we advertised last week, there is a particularly sexy new slice of html on the scene, and that’s www.the-fence.com. It’s been overhauled over a period of months, and is now waiting for your languorous perusal – but only if you are a subscriber.
Now, all existing print subscribers have a log-in, all you need to do is enter the email address associated with your order, and then click ‘forgotten password’ and you’re all set to enter a new one and off you go. If you’re having any problems, please email editorial@the-fence.com.
A number of articles will be put outside the paywall, in the ‘Spotlight’ section, which we will chop and change as we move forward. If you’ve written for us in the past, please feel free to share your pieces online.
At the moment, we are offering digital subscriptions starting at just 50p a month, which we’ve realised is really too low, so this cute little deal will expire at the end of the week, so do score it while you can through the webstore here.
Thank you to everyone who has sent through snaps of the magazine. Davey Brett showed off his haul (and clean sheets) here, Michaela Zoppi paired Issue 16 with her beautiful cat, Christopher, Tom Victor showed us his Primavera diet, Jade Angeles Fitton snapped the mag with her lovely dog, Loki, but our favourite snap was sent to us direct, from John Greenfield’s ‘West Midlands Shangri-La’. What a prospect! As much as we love your pets, we do also have a lot of time for used ashtrays. That’s our ‘vibe’.
Even though we are delighted to have this digital arm, we are primarily devoted to the magazine, and so today we’ve got a deal – if you subscribe to the print magazine, you’ll get Issue 13, Issue 14 and Issue 15 straight away – that’s six magazines for the price of £24.99, but this offer only extends to the first ten subscribers through the door. So move rapidly.
What a long introduction. Our apologies. So much business to conduct! Today, we’ve got some sterling pieces on Jeremy Deller, Hannah Gadsby, and we’re finishing off with a hall-of-famer ‘And Finally’.
Conan The Cross-Cultural Barbarian
Here’s a curious thing about the fashion industry. Why are so many of its leading figures who do dreadful things, like John ‘I Love Hitler’ Galliano, able to revive their careers, as if nothing ever happened? Why is there no accountability in fashion? (Short answer: because nearly all the leading brands are owned by two of the richest men in the world, and all the outlets that could investigate malfeasance – the NYT, Condé Nast, Guardian and so on, receive advertising money from Kering and LVMH.)
So there’s a gap in the market, as they say, and it’s one we’ve been delighted to fill – we wanted to publish a deep dive into the gilded coffin of the fashion world, one that strikes true to those who work in it, and also explains how the industry works to outsiders.
Clive Martin’s piece is available to read here for only a couple days more. If you’ve got some fantastical stories from the couture-sphere, we’d love to hear from you – send us an email to editorial@the-fence.com and let’s make something happen.
Le Juste Prix
Some of you may be familiar with 73 Questions, in which superstars like Taylor Swift are asked a series of quickfire inquiries in a place of their choosing, all in one take. It’s all wholesome fun, but we felt the series could be twice as good – at least. And a lot quicker, too with some real pace on the ball. So, here’s the deal, it’s 146 questions in 146 seconds, and we print all the responses we get, and also the questions that we didn’t have the time to ask.
There was only one person we could ask to kick things off: Adebayo Akinfenwa, the strongest and most charismatic man in professional football. The whole piece is available to read here.
Mr Martin Bought The School
Earlier this year, we published the boldest piece of reportage we’ve ever run, an investigation into a Yorkshire businessman and serial sexual offender who bought a private school outside Harrogate, and then moved Queen Ethelburga’s to his private home, where he was able to molest his pupils over decades. If you haven’t read Mark Blacklock’s piece yet, do take 30 minutes of your day to digest it.
Fascinatingly enough, we learned yesterday that Brian Martin’s continuing role as ‘provost’ of Queen Ethelburga’s has been barred by none other than Gillian Keegan, secretary of state for education. But will this stop the multi-millionaire paedophile from visiting his property on the school? And will there be a more rigorous investigation into Queen Ethelburga’s finances, and who is the ultimate beneficiary of its various trusts?
It is very obviously in the public interest that this story is broadcast on a national platform. We really hope that a major publication will pick up the thread – and soon.
A Little Sketch
Can a broadsheet review reverberate around the world? The answer is probably ‘no’, but Jason Farago’s critique of Hannah Gadsby’s show at the Brooklyn Museum certainly shook the windows of the English-speaking world of arts and letters. Titled, ‘It’s Pablo-matic: Picasso According to Hannah Gadsby’, her ironical take on the Cubist master has not just been filleted – but incinerated to a Guernica-like crisp – by the NYT’s critic at large. (Sample line: ‘the ambitions here at GIF level, though perhaps that is the point.’)
Like all the best hatchet jobs, Farago’s venom is neatly balanced with profound scholarship, and may prove to be a rare, productive sortie in the seemingly unending culture war that’s rumbled on for the last six to seven years. If this speeds its end, it is surely something to be welcomed.
Money For Nothing
We’re pleased to say that the new paywall is working: people are signing up at a real clip, our emails are jingling away, and it gives us a real impetus to keep working harder and harder. Not many current affairs publications have launched – and stayed the course – in Britain this century.
If you’d like to help us build The Fence, then please do subscribe today – our digital sub really is head-spinningly cheap, 50p a month for the early adopters (and that window is closing soon). And as an added bonus, we have brought the cost of a print subscription back to the crushing lows of £24.99 for the first year; it hasn’t been so cheap since before the cost of living crisis, and it probably won’t be this low ever again. If you’re one of the first ten through the door today, we’ll even throw in Issues 13, 14 and 15 for your reading pleasure. Go on, subscribe today.
Odds and Sods
Over a period of 30 years, Jeremy Deller has worked across pretty much every single form of media, like an East Dulwich Andy Warhol. While some of his more recent stuff has tended towards a certain FBPE didacticism, he has made two of the major artworks of the 21st century, the Battle of Orgreave, and the 2016 event, We’re Here Because We’re Here, which commemorated the 100th anniversary of the Battle of the Somme:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JDyqax78Z_M
In many ways, Deller occupies the same territory as Geoff Dyer and Shane Meadows – he has the same preoccupations with class, dance music, 1980s subcultures, 20th century history, drugs, Englishness, and like them, his work is freighted with joy. He has now written a book, entitled Art Is Magic, which rattles through his oeuvre, and gives fantastic detail on how so many of Deller’s collaborations came to pass. If you’re interested in how to make ambitious, game-changing artworks – and you want to have a beautiful book that will be worth a pretty penny in the years to come – then you should pick up a copy. Here’s another clip to get you in the mood:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-7p5hFZz3xE
In Case You Missed It
Cannes you believe it! Ed Cumming has interviewed another Condé Nast legend, meeting Graydon Carter in the South of France, and scoring some great quotes on Anna Wintour and Meghan Markle.
Boris Johnson, Sophie Winkleman, Eric Idle and Cass Pennant, the former ICF top boy, remember the life of Jeremy Clarke, the Spectator’s low life columnist for 23 years.
Jia Tolentino profiles Matthew ‘Matty’ Healy, Mancunian purveyor of beige pop music and an irritating contrarian, for the New Yorker (to be clear, Matty Healy doesn’t write for the NY’er, Jia Tolentino does).
For Interview Magazine, Danny DeVito chats to Arnold Schwarzenegger, for an article so charmingly formless and odd, it approaches the realm of outsider art.
For our friends at Dirt, Becca Schuh remembers her time as a bad waitress.
And Finally
American Werewolf in London is one of the most curious films ever made, a genuinely terrifying horror film, Jenny Agutter-starring love story and, most interestingly for our purposes, a witty satire on Britain, all coming in tight at 97 minutes. Directed and written by John Landis at the age of 31, it was a box office smash (Landis had made Blues Brothers the year before, and Animal House two years before that, which is pretty good going).
For some time now, Terry Gilliam has been the most famous long-term American resident in the capital, and the Monty Python turned baroque auteur of Brazil and Time Bandits has lived in north London for more than 40 years.
The Franco-German documentary series, Durch die Nacht mit, follows two celebrities spending the evening together, where one of them hosts the other, without moderation and interruption.
And we think you know where this is going. Yes. That’s right. Terry Gilliam takes John Landis around London for an evening, where the two Midwesterners – who delight in each other’s company – ooze charm and smash wisecracks as they get thrown out of Highgate Cemetery by a jobsworth before heading into town for a big night out. It’s one for the ages:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C8QKTWvQE2U
That’s it for this week, and we’ll be back next Tuesday. If you’d like to chat to us, please email editorial@the-fence.com, and if you have a question about an order, you can ‘reach out’ to subscriptions@the-fence.com. There’s a lot of exciting articles being launched this week, so do keep an eye on the website and on the socials.
We hope you’re enjoying this weather. All is well in the world (or so it seems).
All the best,
TF