Dear Readers,
Good afternoon and welcome back to Off The Fence, a newsletter that once had a great fondness for a painter – and engraver. What a week it has been. The World Cup is over, Andy Burnham is now officially PM and Issue 28 has powered into its second week of existence. Actually, the new issue has not simply enjoyed a state of existence, but has actually thrived. Everyone is talking about it. On Twitter, Peter Hitchens waded into our discussion of the forthcoming civil war. Jack Jeffery explained his and Abraham Elton’s 8,000-worder on Sacha Jaffri. Bluesky loved Cormac’s piece on the souvenir shops of London and their funding links to Afghanistan.
The new website, engineered by our co-founder Will Pelham with the assistance of an unnamed robotic colleague really does look magnificent – do have a look at it here.
And, we’ve received more photos of the issue than we can possibly keep up with, including at Pret, beneath a neon-pink bus, dominating Good News on Berwick Street and beneath the lit-up signs of TK Maxx. It’s here with a British short hair cat called Sid; on the way to Mallorca; in a pub, of course; enjoying some video art; on the island of Hydra and in a forest in Wales.
Please send all relevant images to editorial@the-fence.com for a chance to win something very special indeed. A bottle of Bollinger, no less. We really do know to treat you.
In the meantime, remember that you can still take out a print subscription to enjoy all the trimmings of our imagination in their full, printed glory. Remember that if you subscribe you will get all the magazines before they arrive in the shops.
Speaking of shops, Issue 28 is very much in situ at all the major WH Smiths, resplendent on the shelves at Gatwick and Paddington – so do pick up a copy there if you’re in transit.
To business. This week we’re saluting a President.
Fixin’ for some Nix’n
‘Nixon’s Back!’ and he may as well have a giant robot body. The OG Oval Office Shifty Grifter has been enjoying an unlikely renaissance of late as Gen Z TikTokers are absolutely falling in love with ‘Nixon Edits’. And it’s hard to disagree with them. Over half a century on from Watergate, who really cares any more? Why would you care when your only interaction with tricky dicky is this beautifully edited masterpiece, or this Don Draper intro’d montage that’s so bursting with American patriotism we almost want to stand up and salute across the Atlantic. We particularly enjoy this interestingly forgetful compilation of his ‘top 5 career moments’ and an emotional NixonxPhil Collins collab.
What makes this weirder, and just a little more concerning, is that the main source of this Nixon aura farming is none other than his own presidential library, applying several different recent trends to old footage of the prez, like varnishing the rotting corpse of a toad. Their official Instagram account is pumping them out like no tomorrow, along with a line of Nixon merch containing his old slogan, ‘Nixon, now more than ever.’ It’s another little spotlight on the strange world of presidential libraries, institutions that through various back channels do tend to receive some federal funding and largely exist to create highly selective images of their respective guy and his view of American history. And yes, every president gets one, even Gerald Ford.
So there it is, the alt-right kiddies love Nixon. It would be the stupidest decision to come out of the states recently, if this bloke in New York hadn’t spent a hundred grand and broken his foot making a crap statue of Charlie Kirk.
Tolka Row
Brenda Fricker, the first Irish actress to win an Oscar, has died at the age of 81. Fricker quickly established herself in roles spanning the breadth of beloved British and Irish television, from Tolka Row to Coronation Street, and five seasons of Casualty. She is perhaps best known for her scene-stealing role as ‘pigeon lady’ In Home Alone 2, her endearing sincerity catching the slapstick film off guard. Adverse to being typecast, other notable turns included a grieving mother in The Field to a tabloid-obsessive in So I Married an Axe Murderer and a brothel madam in Painted Angels – as well as stints at the Royal Court, National Theatre and Royal Shakespeare Company. Characterful and cavalier, she didn’t think much of winning an Academy Award, using it as a doorstop, and in one of her last interviews with The Times talked about her disillusionment with filmmaking today, ‘It’s all sober people, just sitting around tables.’
Donna Summer’s Bad Girls
We have noticed that a depressingly large number of people have taken advantage of a bug in our old website that allows you to buy a print subscription overseas under a UK plan. This bug has now been squished – in the meantime, please do update your subscription here to save yourself the rigmarole of a tedious email from the editor. And if you’re feeling especially penitent, buy a friend a subscription here.
Floreat, Floreat
The story of Sacha Jafri starts on the playing fields of Eton, where he was a popular figure, a legend on the cricket pitch and all the rest of it. One of his peers writes in:
‘Two of my contemporaries are now in prison for killing family members. Chris Francis was captain of the golf team, and murdered his grandmother and aunt with a brick. Matthew Corry went on to teach at the school, and was recently remanded in Broadmoor after murdering his mother. Prince Dipendra – ‘Dippy’ – who shot nine members of his family, was a few years above me, otherwise it would be three.’
(There is no suggestion that Sacha Jafri murdered any members of his family.)
Strings to Our Bow
Do you play an instrument in an orchestra? Or by yourself, for money? Are you what might be termed ‘a professional classical musician’? If so, we would love to talk to you for an upcoming piece. It can be anonymous; it could even be on background – it would all be very helpful. Drop us a line at editorial@the-fence.com and we will take things from there.
I Keep Dining on My Own
Writing may be a mug’s game these days, but not so long ago, you could make an honest fortune toiling in the content mines – just like NME journo-turned-novelist, Tony Parsons, seen here broadcasting his solo meal at Wilton’s, the iconic St James’s fish restaurant beloved by toffs and oligarchs. We’ve crunched the numbers and this is actually the 15th time (no joke) that Parsons has posted about Wilton’s on Instagram this year – Tony, if you’re listening, we salute you. You’ve earned it.
The More They Feel the More They Buy
While you wait for Clive Martin’s profile of Howard Spooner – the nightclub entrepreneur – why not enjoy his reporting from an advertising networking event from Issue 21? ‘I’m in a draughty old warehouse just off Brick Lane, wearing a lanyard, sipping on a can of blackberry & açaí-flavoured Tenzing, while Ferne McCann from The Only Way Is Essex leads a “breathwork session” for an audience entirely comprised of chief marketing executives, global account managers, senior creative leads and heads of innovation (EMEA region).’ Clive ventured into the annals of capitalist mingling to get to grips with the people who sell us all our worldly possessions.
Love in a Hostile Environment
Zara Meerza’s piece on her family’s immigration to the UK is yet to be put online, but our previous coverage of migration to Britain is up there and waiting to be read. In Issue 24 Claire Considine spoke to asylum seekers and refugees about love and dating. ‘In my time working with and reporting on asylum seekers, I’ve always wondered how feasible it is to maintain a love life in the mayhem.’ She met and spoke to lots of people, including Victor, a boy arriving from Nigeria at a school in Hackney, who ‘decided, in his infinite wisdom, that the best way to woo his crush was to serenade her. In the playground. In front of the entire school. “Oh God, I’m blushing,” he squirms, in a rare break from cloud-like calm. “I sang Ocean Eyes by Billie Eilish. I was a bit rusty so my voice cracked. To this day I can’t listen to that song.”’ Some indignities are universal.
In Case You Missed It
Senator John Kenedy’s exercise bike is named after Margaret Thatcher.
The virtues of a post-literate lifestyle.
Vanessa Bell supported Argentina in the World Cup.
Muhammad Shehada from the ECFR writes for the LRB about Marwan Barghouti.
And Finally
‘Who’s your favourite Beatle?’ is one of those questions that we should all really dread. It speaks to a conversation that is dying on its arse and could only ever have been funny if George Martin asked it mid-recording session sometime around the late 60s.
And yet the answer, increasingly, might be Ringo. To be clear, we’re not judging them on moral grounds – close inspection suggests they’re all a little shaky on this front as seems roughly par for the course for 60s rock stars. But more cynically, did anyone play it better than the man who got his nickname because he wore four rings? He’s made piles of money, famously never practiced, avoided most of the in-band fighting and in later life found a much better plastic surgeon than Paul could lay his hands on.
And now he just spends his time being mental online. His Instagram has long been a treasure trove on this front. There was a brief period where he experimented with early filters, his truly artful series of silent posts and this haunting request to buy his ‘new CD’. But recently, he’s been popping up in stranger and stranger places. We particularly enjoyed this appearance he made on a livestream where his Gen Z host had absolutely no idea who he was.
But nothing can beat his recent appearance with Geoguessr superstar Rainbolt. Geoguessr is a simple game where people are dropped somewhere in the world via Google Maps street view function and they have to pinpoint where they are. Bizarrely, such a simple idea has become an international e-sport and has made some of its best players, like Rainbolt, into stars big enough to be able to bring on a Beatle as a kind of fun side attraction. It’s phenomenal stuff.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KDPDSyRw_p0
Ringo bingo bango, it’s another week in the book folks. If you need us, we’ll be here, and by here we mean editorial@the-fence.com. Do keep pitching, and do keep those pictures streaming in. If you’ve had any technical issues, let us know on support@the-fence.com. Otherwise, we wish you a week of sturdy resistance in the face of buffeting winds. World Cup winner Lamine Yamal’s father was born in 1992.
All the best,
TF