Dear Readers,
Good afternoon, and welcome back to Off The Fence, possibly the best newsletter you’ll receive all week.
First up: while rummaging down the backs of our plush office sofa, we found a whole handful more discount tokens for our summer sale. Incredibly, on account of our clumsiness and our generosity, there are now 20 more opportunities to claim 20% off any subscription – that’s print, digital or both – with the promo code ICECREAM20. This also applies to gift subscriptions, too.
Last Chance Saloon for the Sale
This is the final hurrah for this year: we won’t be offering discounted subscriptions till 2026, so do move now to stave off disappointment.
We’ve had an excellent set of snaps come in this week. Firstly, this excellently framed shadow-and-issue combo, in from the Lithuanian coast, followed by a novel use of the issue as a tarot table in east Berlin. (We’ve been informed the reading is reasonably positive, feel free to unpack its meanings for us in the comments.) Finally, the issue has been spotted hiding behind a carefully placed mug and in the happy hand of a subscriber.
A warm reminder that the most interesting snap will find its snapper a bottle of Bollinger, courtesy of The Fence – personally delivered, in most cases. Send your efforts to editorial@the-fence.com, or tag us on socials while you display your good taste to the rest of your followers.
Now, will you have a look at this lovely window display that our friends at Backstory have put on for our wonderful book, The Pub, at their store in Balham.
It seems that pub writing is having a moment – the Daily Telegraph released a magazine dedicated to the boozer… and did so in a very distinctive style.
Anyway, if you’re a bookseller, and you’d like to stock The Pub, then please get in touch with Gardners, who are handling the distribution. We are planning a few in-person talks and events in the months to come – if you’re interested in hosting one, then please get in touch with the editor at cb@the-fence.com.
This week’s a punchy one. For your weekly feast, we’ve got news on the BBC’s concerns at potentially funding government-defined terrorism, a festival far more dangerous than the Carnival and the Swedish Barry Lyndon. Before we get there, though, let’s start with a dispatch from everyone’s favourite Gen-Z correspondent, Lotte Brundle, who’s back in Battersea again.
Summer Days, Drifting Away
I recall the first time I saw John Travolta's rhythmic thrusts to Greased Lightnin’, as I sat on the sofa at home with my mother, aged ten. 15 years later, I was in Battersea Park after my mum had ignored my plea for ‘no more interactive experience outings’ after the train crash of a Mother’s Day that saw her, my brother and I have a full-blown row in the middle of Monopoly Lifesized when we couldn’t complete the challenge set for us once we had landed on the Kings Cross Station Square. This involved shovelling ‘coal’ into a furnace in a small dark room under time pressure while getting increasingly angry at one another for ‘doing it WRONG’ as our host, a woman dressed as the Iron playing piece who had taken to referring to herself as ‘Press Daly’ watched on in despair. Undeterred by this frankly nightmarish experience, Mum had booked us in for another day of family bonding in the capital: tickets to Grease The Immersive Movie Musical.
As I arrived at Battersea Power Station at 6pm to meet her, my aunt and her best friend from university, crowds of middle-aged women sporting black-and-white polka-dot skirts and age-inappropriate ringlets spewed out of the escalator. My concern for the evening only grew as we approached the part of the park where the ‘immersion’ was set to begin. The idea was that actors would perform parts of the film live, involving the audience, and allowing them to roam around the ‘set’ as parts of the movie played in the background on a big screen. I didn’t have high hopes for it, but Mum was very excited, perhaps just because she was out of West Sussex for the night and in the thick of the action.
‘Welcome back to Rydell! Are you excited for your first day of school?’ the first staffer we approached said, in an accent so American, and so shrill, that it made my skin crawl. Another greeted my 60-something mother ‘Hey kid’, and gave us some vouchers for the fairground rides that definitely posed a risk to her new knee. She beamed. The first part of the experience was set outdoors, strewn with hot dog stands and hook-a-duck stalls and looked like a very nicely done school fete. Men in red bow ties swarmed around us carrying drink trays and we preloaded with cans of sauvignon blanc, before a big screen encouraged us to count down and the film began.
‘I’ve just had the best summer, and now I have to leave,’ Olivia Newton-John’s dulcet Australian twang rang out. ‘Danny, is this the end?’ she implored Travolta. ‘Of course not,’ he replied, baby-blue eyes twinkling. ‘It’s only the beginning.’ With that, we were shepherded inside a large building, acting as the high school. I almost lost sight of mum and our group in the throng, so I held on to her arm until we were safely in our seats. ‘VIP seats,’ she told me, with a proud smile and a small hug.
The running of the experience was clever; further large screens showed snippets from the film, and live actors took over when it got to the famous numbers, encouraging the audience to join in with the action on a large stage in the centre of the room. A buzz of excitement ran through me. I ordered a jello shot from the menu at Frosty Palace (inspired by the diner in the film) and tipsily licked the whipped cream and sprinkles off the top while explaining to my mum’s friend that a drink like this is usually referred to as a ‘blow job’.
‘Isn’t he a good likeness?’ my mum said, as she gestured to the actor playing Danny. By this point, I had finished my drink and mum offered to buy me another round, so we shimmied through the crowd and headed for the bar.
‘Two margaritas, one banana milkshake and a Diet Coke, please,’ I requested. The staffer, dressed in a grey jumpsuit, nodded. ‘Are you a mechanic?’ I enquired. ‘I’m whatever you want me to be’, he said with a wink.
The show has a five-week run, he told us, adding that he knows the songs so well by now he ‘reckons [he] could audition for it’. ‘How many days do you get off a week,’ I pressed. ‘We’re off on Mondays,’ he replied with the fixed smile of a man who has listened to Born to Hand Jive more times than nature intended.
‘What’s your favourite song?’ I asked another behind the bar.
‘Erm… name a few. I can’t think of any off the top of my head.’
‘We Go Together?’ my mum suggested.
‘Yes, that’s the one.’
We made it back to our seats, and I looked over at Mum, clutching her milkshake with all the delight of a schoolgirl. Greased Lightnin’ began, and we squealed as Danny descended from the ceiling, riding a tyre and wiggling his hips. All of my teenage fantasies were coming true and my aunt’s prediction that the evening had ‘the potential to be really naff’ had failed to materialise.
All too soon, the beginning of You’re the One That I Want blasted out, and I rested my head on Mum’s shoulder. We’ll Always Be Together, the cast sang. Mum reached for my hand and squeezed it.
KGB Bar
Empty offices. Faraday cages. Tins of Special Brew and microphones built into window ledges. What a delight it was to send John Phipps towards the untold history of the Russian Trade Delegation building in Highgate, and a century of spying between our two countries.
Over months of interviews, research and good old-fashioned snooping around the newly derelict building, Phipps was able to pull together a cohesive story on this opaque node of Western intelligence. The end result, written with customary skill and an eye for the absurd, is like no other feature you’ll read this week – and vital for understanding a terse yet knotted relationship that holds implications for the planet’s survival. Read here today.
Abu Hamza’s Lunch Money
The government’s decision to proscribe Palestine Action as a terrorist group has, quite rightly, dominated headlines this summer. Recently, the Irish author, Sally Rooney – who has made tens of millions of pounds from her wildly successful books and the adaptations thereof – pledged to continue supporting Palestine Action, saying ‘if this makes me a supporter of terror under UK law, so be it.’
The two adaptations of Rooney’s novels – the excellent Normal People and the so-so Conversations with Friends – were adapted by the BBC.
We have been told that there have been extensive meetings between BBC executives and Treasury officials, to discuss potential criminal liability for being involved in a terrorist supply chain if Auntie continues to pay Sally Rooney royalties.
Front-Left at the Rampage Stage
Every year, the clamour to displace or ban Notting Hill Carnival grows ever-more ominous. While there are valid – extremely valid – concerns about safety, it was heartening to see this year pass without a major incident.
But there is one festival in the United Kingdom that is always pierced by the ambulance’s wail. Since its inception in 1907, there have been 266 fatalities on the Isle of Man TT Mountain Course, a ludicrously dangerous competition, where superbikes buzz down rural lanes at over 200mph.
In 2022 alone, there were five deaths and two serious injuries. Of course, it could be very safely moved to a stadium on the mainland, in much the same manner that Notting Hill Carnival’s detractors insist it could be moved to a park. Might our old friend Peter Hitchens issue forth a column on the subject? We watch with bated breath.
Summon Forth Thackeray’s Ghost
The story of Dame Natalie Massenet, the founder of Net-a-Porter, and her younger ex-boyfriend, Erik Torstennson, has the same timbre and tone as Barry Lyndon. The details of their lifestyle, of the homes on either side of the Atlantic, are astonishing, but not quite as staggering as the insight into how much money is being made at Massenet’s company, Imaginary Ventures, a venture capital firm.
Is there a lesson in all of this? Yes, a very elementary one. Never, ever, trust a straight man who works in fashion.
Rolling Back the Years
As some of you will remember, John Phipps was our very first staff writer, and was responsible for many of the pieces that made people take notice of The Fence, as the magazine first arose out of the digital ether. From parodies like a Samuel Pepys diary or this Martin Amis tribute, to now-classic pieces of comic reportage and, of course, to superlative long reads, in this case about the Republic of Ireland’s only Oliver Cromwell super-fan.
At the Institute of the Art and Ideas
It really is a pleasure to see pieces that we published three, four and sometimes five years ago pop up on the timeline, as our 2021 investigation into Hilary Lawson does with increasing frequency. Lawson, a philosopher and property magnate, is the brains behind the HowTheLightGetsIn Festival. This piece inspired our new editorial assistant, Ralph Jeffreys, to turn down a job there… and apply for one at TF towers. Life’s rich tapestry!
In Case You Missed It
An excellent essay on Putin’s strange belief in The Tale of Bygone Years, a medieval chronicle of Russia's mythical forebears, the Kievan Rus.
The excellent, and slightly concerning, twitter of a Chinese scientist formerly jailed for gene-editing embryos.
This small boy from the US is incredibly good at imitating bird calls.
A good full-length piece on the AI trend in African politics which we talked about a good few newsletters ago.
A nonsense history-rant from Australia’s strangest politician, Bob Kattar, to an almost entirely.
Our congratulations go out to Lucy Osborne and Sirin Kale following their victory in the High Court against Noel Clarke. Their original report is worth reading.
And Finally
Our last offering today comes all the way from the distant realms of the programming of Channel 4 in 2009. It's a short TV doc made by Ellena Wood (who would later go on to direct Louis Theroux’s documentary on anorexia). The focus is on the world (and the men) of personalised number plates, correctly titled UR 50 V41N.
The finest section happens when N2GEL is put in contact with his rival, the notorious N1GEL. Their meeting is awkward as you might expect, full of compliments said with strained smiles – an incredibly British version of the business card scene from American Psycho. Best of all is the way N1GEL reveals his ‘thunderbird garage’. It's a truly mesmeric piece of pointless male one-upmanship. As funny as it is, the documentary also features surprisingly candid interviews with N2GEL and his wife, revealing an interesting, and rather sad story of a boy shipped off to boarding school with one message ringing in his ears ‘status, status, status’. In this respect, it's a different look at a very old tale.
The rest of the doc is a short, fun, deeply 00s look at the men who spend huge amounts on what they are often aware are entirely pointless vanity items. There’s the gold merchant with numberplate AU 1 (which he valued at over £100,000) and a mechanic who happily stands next to his plate that reads B1G 6661 and says, ‘You basically spend a fortune on something that’s not going to benefit you at all’.
The values involved here really are quite something, given we are, at the end of the day, talking about a thin piece of metal thwacked to the front of a car. Kitting out our own editorial staff (an all-star cast of CH74 RLY, SE74 MAS, ROI 151, K18 RAN and R47 LPH) would cost a neat little £51,643. Expect to see a fundraiser in next week's newsletter.
A final piece of fun is that the poster of this fine doc on YouTube is none other than N2GEL himself, who has remained active in the comments, if you get to the end and find yourself craving a ‘where-are-they-now’ 80s style ending.
That’s it for this week, and we’ll be back with another outing next Tuesday. Remember to send pitches to editorial@the-fence.com; all other questions to support@the-fence.com. Buy a mag or a bag or a discounted subscription here. David Foster Wallace wore his famous headband to stop himself sweating in public. Speak soon.
All the best,
TF