Dear Readers,
Good afternoon and welcome back to Off The Fence, a newsletter 32,000 people are quite fond of.
In exciting news, our autumn sale is now on. It’s the perfect time to jump from passive newsletter reader to active TF subscriber, or indeed, get that Christmas gift in early. Enter the code NOVEMBER at checkout for a 20 per cent discount from all subscriptions, including gift subs. That gets you a year of beautiful print magazines for just a touch over £25 (or three Mayfair pints, a dodgy fade or a pack of cigs in Westbourne Grove). It’s a hell of a deal.
We have lots of great articles coming your way this month and some very exciting things in the pipeline. We do know that lots of you are putting together gift guides for various publications – how the festive season looms – so please do include our two-tone periodical if you are so inclined. People do like it.
This time round, PTA annoys us in advance, we survey a fascinating, if complex, media personality and we get ready for some midterms. After you.
Bath Time!
As we write this newsletter we are pushed up hard against the media-event horizon delineated by the U.S. midterm elections. It’s going to be a fascinating one to watch over the tickertape. Will Texas flip blue? Will Abdul El-Sayed weather the barrage of attacks (including his own party peer coming out against him) and come out on top? Much hangs in the balance, and a double-Dem victory could effectively lock up the President for the next two years to come.
But one thing remains certain: DJT will continue to deliver long nonsensical rambles. They’re the kind of thing that have lost their novelty over time, an easy throat clearer for a late-night host howling into the void of his placid liberal audience. All the same, this final pre-election plea which involved a lengthy show-and-tell update about the state of the reflecting pool was a real doozy. Eat up libtards!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DG-gjfUzCgU
Getting Killed
Later this month preview screenings will take place for Cameron Winter at Carnegie Hall, to the yammering elation of the most annoying people you know. Directed by Paul Thomas Anderson, the film is a concert recording of the solo album from the famed frontman of Geese, an indie rock band that has seen a meteoric rise over the last two years. Except allegations over the summer claimed swathes of these fans were fake, allegations that Winter pleaded ignorant to in a subsequent interview with Rolling Stone, ‘we marched up to our label over email, the relevant team members, like, “How long have all our fuckin’ fans been fake, you sons of bitches?”’ As Shaad D’Souza explains in our latest issue this situation is all too common of indie music today– a symptom of its transition from a genre to an economic class, and a punishing one at that.
I’m Boiling Under This Tiara
While the nation sweated in pubs this summer waiting through the delay for England to play Mexico, Nell Whittaker was attending a different kind of contest. Kicking off with no delays but the same taught anticipation, she details her evening at the regional Devon heat of Miss Great Britain in one of our zippiest features yet. Despite quickly being stonewalled by those in charge, over the course of this year’s competition, Whittaker delved into this strange and storied tradition, looking into the business and women involved with fresh eyes. Read it here.
Anews-Bouche
One of the more fascinating media personalities to come out of the YouTube ear has to be Andrew Callaghan. The nerdy, Napoleon-Dynamite adjacent fellow made waves on the platform by going to some pretty bizarre places and talking to the strangest people he could find. It worked for Louis Theroux, and its worked for Callaghan and given us some fascinating stuff over the years – an interview with the Q Anon Shaman from January 6, a trip to Chicago’s notorious O Block and a profile of the bizarre Hoff Twins.
But in recent years, the plot has thickened. On the one hand, he has been at the centre of some less than positive things. He was accused of sexual coercion and assault by two women back in DATE, and has a tendency to fan some conspiracist claims, which can muddy the waters of his claim to be man-on-the-street style voice of truth. And yet, he is undeniably putting out some pretty phenomenal work at the moment. Just yesterday, he released this excellent hour-long look into Jared Kushner’s corruption, a story that involves a sit-down meeting with Albania’s under-fire Prime Minister Edi Rama.
Michael Flatley Starring in Celtic Tiger
Amongst the slop of Zara hauls, TikTok shop and gift guide reels we have found some social media retail therapy we can get behind. Crap in Charity Shops is exactly what it sounds like, a highlight reel of the best cops on offer found along high streets across the country - joyfully disrupting your feed with snaps of tomes such as Richard & Judy’s joint autobiography, an embroidered ‘Happy Divorce 2022’ pillow and a play on Pringles in the form of ‘Shingles’ long sleeve. They even thoughtfully location-tag, giving you the chance of being the proud owner of a cosy pair of Elvis Uggs, a Mother Theresa mug, a pack of Tottenham Hotspur golf tees or, at the least, 50 DVD copies of Grease.
And now for a kind offer for readers of The Fence from our friends at Flint Wines below…
Beyond Burgundy
With the cost of delicious wine jumping year on year, we’ve joined with one of the country’s leading importers, Flint Wines, to put together a very special mixed case for everyone looking to entertain well as the winter months draw in.
The total cost of the six bottles below would be somewhere near £200 separately, but the case below is £120 all in, including VAT and delivery. This will be limited to one case per household and while supplies last.
We are only dealing with lovely juicy pinot noir and precise chardonnay from the world’s leading vineyards, from Margaret River to the Valle d’Aoste.
The case comprises:
2023 Santa Barbara County, Chardonnay, Tyler Winery
2023 Prelude Vineyards, Chardonnay, Leeuwin Estate
2024 Break a Leg Chardonnay, Lukas Van Loggerenberg
2024 Eola Amity Hills Pinot Noir, Evening Land
2023 Pinot Noir Vallée d’Aoste, Elio Ottin
2022 Marlborough, Pinot Noir, Corofin Winery
All you need to do is send an email to finewine@flintwines.com and they will take care of you.
I Have Patrick
Szilveszter Makó is the latest fashion darling to have curdled in public commentary – as anyone following one or two glossies will know, the Hungarian photographer and his surrealist style has saturated Insta feeds and newsstands so much so that think pieces are warming up to decry the homogeny of editors’ rolodexes. While we can’t help but agree that it is all starting to look a little samey – we’ve counted nine cover shoots since September alone – this is hardly anything new in the industry. Leibovitz, Meisel and Demarchelier no doubt would have had rival issues sporting their covers within the same month – the latter was such an institution he is now one of quoted refrains of The Devil Wears Prada – although prolifically using a photographer with such a distinct visual style does beg the question of switching things up a bit. It seems in an attempt to inject some artfulness into mainstream fashion media Makó is being denied a day off, surely there must be another solution.
At TF towers, we feel a bit nostalgic for the spreads of now-defunct mags, like the always brassy Nova, where one cover shot Twiggy shaving her armpit, or the bold visuals in Sarah Mower’s The Fashion, where an infamous shark shoot had models gamely posing in underwater cages. For those similarly misty eyed for pre-algorithm days, the newly restored fashion doc Isaac Mizrahi Unzipped is a brilliant 90s time capsule of the exuberant creativity of an upcoming cabal of fashion icons – from the maximalist designer to the supers in their heyday, with cameos from Gallino, Polly Mellen and André Leon Talley. Look out for the limited screenings at the Prince Charles Cinema over the last weekend in November.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mmyR9n7Er18
Sanity Is Insanity
While we’re delighted to have famous brands as advertising partners, but we’re equally delighted to work with plucky upstart creatives like Tributary Releasing, who have an advert for their film Better Go Mad in the Wild in the current issue.
Excitingly, the London premiere is being held on Thursday 5 November at the Garden Cinema with critic Wendy Ide in conversation with the film’s director, Miro Remo, after the screening. The Guardian called it a ‘rowdy, rapturous and brilliant film’.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IOP1yzIFEFY
In Case You Missed It
Winston Churchill’s last surviving secretary died.
A brilliant Ghostbusters remix to kiss spooky season goodbye.
The new ultrarich status symbol is dinosaurs.
‘Mundane Halloween’ is all the rage in Japan.
Could this be the start of a Tradwife exodus?
Former paratrooper arrives back in Hull after a 28-year walk around the world.
Before Dua Lipa there was READ.
The only kind of song cover we’re interested in these days.
The North Korean embassy is a seven-bed detached house in Ealing.
And Finally
What’s surprising, looking back, is how frequently William F. Buckley pauses. He looks at the camera, his eyes downturned like a fish, and he waits to speak. In the introduction of his guest Murray Kempton, Buckley lazes through the journalist’s achievements and virtues: ‘Mr Kempton’s specialties are wit and irony and a compassion that is sometimes unruly,’ he drawls. He is drowsily at ease with the strengths of his subject, whom he opposes on almost every conceivable subject. ‘Gee,’ replies Kempton. ‘You have a new technique now.’ Buckley looks a little quizzical. ‘ I understood that you used to destroy your guests. Now what you do is overwrite them profoundly – and then let them destroy themselves.’ Buckley smiles and the audience laughs. Kempton isn’t wrong to be suspicious.
Buckley remains as curiously popular as he ever was for his old-worldy incision of, and occasionally his defeat by, a spate of lefty guests. He crops up all over Instagram reels and YouTube shorts. His interview with Kempton is only one example of the content that keeps the old mill churning. Kempton was what Buckley described as a socialist journalist. He was a happy product of the New Journalism, producing columns chubby with adjectives and sub-clauses on all manner of subjects. He was known for his adoption of underdogs and bêtes noires including Richard Nixon post-Watergate. He also wrote for Buckley at the National Review, leading to a lifelong and unlikely friendship. Towards the end of his shiny career, he won a Pulitzer in recognition of his public commentating. Yet he was always a little uncertain of his talents, and perhaps with good reason. In his New York Times obituary, the paper recalled that ‘one occasion, Mr. Kempton was sued for libel by the conservative pundit Victor Lasky. But Mr. Lasky lost his case on appeal because the court became impaled on some of Mr. Kempton’s sentences and did not understand what the offending article meant. Even worse, the court was not convinced that any normal person had understood it either.’ Say what you will about Buckley: he was always scrupulously comprehensible.
Which takes us back to their conversation tussling over the emergence of Bobby Kennedy as a presidential candidate three years after the assassination of his brother John on a motorcade in Dallas. Both are teasingly non-committal to the young Democrat’s cause. Kempton even concurs with Buckley’s suggestion that the Kennedys lack politics, and prefer to adopt a cause in careful furnishing of their popularity and image. Over 45 nudgingly enjoyable minutes, Buckley and Kempton cluck through and digest the questions of the day. It would be banal to ascribe it more significance than it really has. It isn’t a life-changing interview, but it’s a good one, and that is worth something.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yCxX_5qLVoU
And now, the end is near. Do remember to buy a subscription at the checkout with the code NOVEMBER. A whirlwind week as ever – we hope you enjoyed the thrust of this missive and that it’s left you feeling like the cock of the walk. Dreadful, wasn’t that? Anyhow, you can ring our bell at editorial@the-fence.com or support@the-fence.com depending on what you’re needing. As we enter the month of November, the oranges in your shelves will go from being African to Spanish.
All the best,
TF