Dear Readers,
Good afternoon, and welcome back to Off The Fence: a newsletter, of that there can be no doubt.
We are pleased to report the incipient spread of Issue 25 across the planet writ large, beginning first in its native lands and sauntering all the way across the continents, to new and exciting locales – many of which have never seen such beauteous print before (or so we are told). Here we are giving succour at the Whittington Hospital; receiving skin advice; occupying a hiker on a sunny day; outside Bologna’s hottest restaurant; touring the grand mosques of Khiva; and pinned up against a fridge full of natty orange. We were especially taken with this beautiful snap of the magazine at the Mount Beacon fire tower. Just gorgeous.
You keep them coming, and we’ll keep posting. Remember: best snap gets a bottle of Bollinger for their troubles, so get creative and the champers could be yours. Just send through your best to editorial@the-fence.com.
Now, this is your last opportunity to score a subscription at the current rates before prices increase. The fees are going up in the next couple of days so do sign up now and save yourself some money.
On the docket this week, we have jubilant publicans, potato-based theatre and some pressing questions about Lord Mandelson. But before we get there, we return to our own personal underworld.
The Brandwraith Cometh
A spectre moves through National Treasure Land. Stealthily, relentlessly. Its presence is a sure sign of a death amongst the latter-day sort-of saints whom the British public have elevated in the sea of slop that passes for our national consciousness. It manifests in all sorts of places: breakfast television studios, Facebook reels for the elderly, in the corridors of the Garrick club. It leaves little reminders of its presence, a dropped Scrabble tile here, a strand of wool from a novelty jumper there. It is known by ancient sources by one name:
B r a n d r e t h
That’s right, as the nights draw in and the lives of beloved famous people draw to a close, former MP, Scrabble champion, teddy bear museum creator and all-round giver-off of appalling vibes, Gyles Brandreth blocks out his diary.
He is both harbinger and profiteer from the celebrity death. It has been a bumper period for Brandreth, bagging himself a trio of Grand Dames: Patricia Routledge, Jilly Cooper, Prunella Scales. After the death of each, Brandreth was there, armed with teatime-friendly anecdotes, talking about how very close he was to each of them and opining on how wonderful they and he were together. One might speculate that the reason why Brandreth appears so reliably after the death of a famous person is because, short of a Ouija Board at the next Order of Merit luncheon, nobody can call out his bullshit (which is worth 13 points in Scrabble).
Frequent readers will know that our magazine has the largest collection of Brandrephemera in the British media, beating our friends at Arena HOMME+ into a respectable second place. You will have seen his excruciating hand-washing tutorial with Judi Dench, if you’ve hung around here long enough – maybe even his Mickey Rooney-esque racist impression of Gary Glitter. But we’re willing to wager you haven’t seen this – Brandreth’s attempt to break the Guinness world record for longest on-screen kiss, with the obliging Cheryl Baker, on the sofas of TV-am. As he reveals, this was not Brandreth’s first attempt: he’d tried the same feat with Anne Diamond on Good Morning Britain a few years prior, but was forced to abandon the effort mid-snog so the show could move on to covering President Brezhnev’s funeral.
Bring Back the Club Rats
Last week’s Capital Letter starts with a guide to the clandestine hotspots of London where you might spot a spy, and continues with a guide to some of the most interesting new plays coming up – you’ll want to book tickets now for Faustus in Africa! – and ending up with a stroll through London’s most old-fashioned ‘village’. It’s all available to read here, and very good it is too. We were always going to have decent coverage of pubs, restaurants and historical curios, and it’s been a pleasure to add superb coverage of the theatre and the art world, too.
But we’re absolutely delighted to say that we will, from next Thursday, have dedicated club coverage in the newsletter, with vibe reports from exciting underground nights and dispatches about who wore what and where – first up, a trip to a night in London in east London known on the circuit as the ‘KGB’. You should sign up right here now. Ignore the doomsters, the reactionary gronks and the know-nothings – there are exciting things happening in London’s nightlife scene.
Sons of Albion
Do you remember when The Libertines first exploded onto – and later came to embody – The Scene? Incredibly, two members of our editorial team are too young to have done so (the youngest doesn’t even remember David Beckham’s playing career), but the rest of us do, although none of us can say we were there. Katie Lewis can – she was at its very epicentre, in the squalid apartment known as the Albion Rooms as Pete Doherty’s partner and muse. Katie writes beautifully and vividly about this tumultuous time, as Pete, Carl and the band shot to fame and burned up in the atmosphere. The result is a spectacular read, and the perfect compliment to her first piece for us in Issue 24. Tuck into both without delay.
If they give you the taste for London’s scuzzy past, we have so much more to whet your newfound appetite. Take the story of two hotels – the rundown Rose Hotel in Dalston, or the purportedly haunted Ace Hotel in Shoreditch – or Clive Martin’s dispatch from a gangster’s wake at The Blind Beggar in Whitechapel. Or Jimmy McIntosh’s iconic pub crawls around Canning Town, Purfleet and Harlington. Or Will Buckley’s tender memorial for his friend, Gary Fairfull, the man who invented Shoreditch.
Tattle Tales
Which industry has the worst gossip? And which one has the best? As nodes for all sorts of intel, we were able to offer a qualitatively exact survey which is now on Instagram for you all to enjoy here. People who work in advertising – look away now.
The Kids Are Crazy These Days
Is Yungblud kin to the bobble-headed landlord of The Devonshire, Oisín Rogers? We only ask because this photo that Rogers shared on his Instagram stories – in which he is seen jumping for joy like a small toddler who’s just been told that he’s visiting Santa at Winter Wonderland – would suggest that they are, at the very least, distantly related.
Or maybe rockstars like hanging out with late-middle-aged publicans these days? The world is changing so fast that we can’t keep up.
On the Merguez Hype
That all being said, there’s an excellent new (reborn) pub in Soho down Carnaby way. The Shaston Arms is the place to go for Guinness and superb tucker – you’ll find us there later this evening and quite a few evenings to come in the future too. Peruse their enticing menu here.
Compliments to the Jeff!
Yes it’s an Epstein story! Everywhere else has got one so we thought we’d get in on the action surrounding the deceased New York financier (which gives us an excuse to post Jim Downey’s superlative bit). Whilst there were doubtless countless Brits on the Île d’Epstein, two names have always been at the fore. Yet, in the omnipresence of stories about Andy, Mandy seems to have flown under the radar a little. Given Andrew has lost his titles, surely it’s only a matter of time before Lord Mandelson loses his, given that he was indisputably much closer to Jeff than Andrew was?
Given its under-the-radar status, the inevitable question arises: is there more to come on the Mandy story? Tales of his time at Westminster, on the London party circuit, and, indeed, of his brief tenure Stateside have reached our ears that suggest there almost certainly is. As ever, if you have some gold or some shit, or a combination of both, send it our way to editorial@the-fence.com.
Thanks a Lot, Elgar
Some writers can turn their hand to anything – and Yoel Noorali is one of them. Fertility tests are both ruthlessly clinical and necessarily intimate, up to a certain point anyway. Writing in the latest issue, Yoel, hungover and clasping a glass panel for a broken cabinet, had to give up the goods in his allotted time window, navigating the remorselessly asexual environment of an NHS sperm clinic. The result is one of the funniest pieces we’ve published in a long while, from a writer who we trust to tackle any topic, no matter how onanistic. Read it for free today.
The World’s a Stage, the Men and Women Merely Taters
Some months ago we bemoaned a new neighbour of ours on Archer Street, the Spud Bros, who had been slinging their trademarked and exorbitantly priced starch with a worrying degree of success. It seems however that a new venture of theirs has not ended quite so successfully.
This was an ‘immersive theatre experience’ called Till Death Do Us Party, a‘shamelessly enjoyable’ (Telegraph) ‘unrepentantly good time’ (TimeOut) musical about a chaotic wedding between two families – the Bush-Fullers and the Coxs – where, shockingly, the caterers have cancelled last minute. This of course allows for both characters and audience alike to be served the venerated spud, ‘because no wedding drama is complete without carbs.’
It was set to take over One Ninety Four in Piccadilly, a frankly perfect venue. Incidentally, it’s hard to know where those hastily clipped press quotes have come from, given that the production apparently never made it to previews and they are notably absent from either publication’s websites. Perhaps they have been as hastily deleted as the show’s official Instagram and TikTok pages.
The immersive theatre experience is a bankrupt idea and probably always has been, given that two of three words involved should be contained by the other. All the same, this is an exceptionally bald-faced bit of brand melding. Its producer claims that ‘when I saw the Spud Bros’ Red Caps’, that’s the content makers/servers ‘serving their famous potatoes and entertaining the queue at their pop-up shop in Archer Street London, I just knew they would be the perfect caterers for our mad and joyous immersive comedy wedding show.’ It seems however this perfect marriage has fallen apart, with the money running out a week before opening night so you’ll have to find some other means of entertainment.
In Case You Missed It
Leo Robson with a truly fantastic memoir of his teenage cinéaste kicks. But when will he write about his current music tastes?
That’s not a glass, Mr President.
A Mongolian reporter’s experience of re-education in the school of Xi Jinping journalism.
An elderly Scouse musician details why he left London for the Scottish countryside.
The brilliant sounds of carreirão from northeastern Brazil.
And Finally
Can we introduce you to Tony Morris? He is a 73-year-old former academic, accountant and taxi driver. These days he makes strange, haunting dance music, most songs under a minute to an adoring internet following.
The best descriptor we’ve seen so far for his work is as a ‘Minimal Ivor Cutler’, one who’s taken a fancy to dance music. It’s an acquired taste, but one we recommend for pure weirdness alone. Take his first viral post, a short song about ordering a large decaffeinated coffee and an alienating friendship, or this shirtless entry which will resonate perhaps a little too deeply with anyone who has had to work hospitality.
He has something of Krapp about him in his videos, with their distorted tones and visuals conjuring one man’s offerings to the void. Indeed, he makes the connection himself when describing his discovery and newfound love: ‘Finally, when I was 65, Godot turned up in the form of the Glasgow underground electronic music scene.’
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FtIXVvLxKSw
It is unsurprising that he has a cult following that runs the gamut from the Gen Zs with well-tuned Instagram algorithms to those of Morris’ age. The degree of cult-love is perhaps surprising, as he is routinely mobbed as he comes off-stage, with one woman apparently falling down in front of him to kiss his feet. He plays intense 30 minute sets before receiving his adoring fans and heading home for a needed lie down. To our mind he is a bizarre, beautiful totem of modern alienation. We suggest you join the following.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x4b9r9acG3I
That is that is that is that – newsletter, finito. If you’re awaiting your copy and wondering what the hell is going on, email support@the-fence.com and we will, naturally, support you. If you have any tips, pics or insights, editorial@the-fence.com is the one for you. The copyright to the Happy Birthday song was only invalidated in 2016; Warner Music had earned around $2 million a year from it. Until next week.
All the best,
TF