Dear Readers,
Good afternoon, and welcome back to Off The Fence: a newsletter from the UK’s Only Magazine. Today, it’s very much all systems go from our side of things, as Issue 22 goes thumps the rattan doormats of the great and good that number our subscribers. In case we have not mentioned the existence of this issue in previous missives, let us run it down one more time.
This is the best issue of the magazine we have ever produced. From cover to cover, we have in the mix: a peek inside big tobacco, Britain’s final lobotomies, Miranda Sawyer on the media execs who really made the weather in the nineties, and 146 Questions with the lead singer of Papa Roach, Jacoby Shaddix. The illustrations are gorgeous, the gags are daft and there’s a very big argument for this being our most beautiful cover ever.
It’s only £7.50 – buttons these days, really – and you can read it all Christmas long. And you will need us at some point over the winter, even if you really really love your family. Tap the cover below and buy a copy, or head out to WH Smith, we’re on the shelves.
In other abundantly obvious news – it’s gift-giving season, haven’t you heard? And a TF subscription makes one helluva stocking-stuffer: we’re only £30 for the year, and the pedant and print-head in your life will love getting something from us every quarter. Get your present-buying sorted early below.
So we won’t hang around too much – just a couple of little snippets today on dirty baizes, an updated pitch guide, and at the very bottom, a necessary reappraisal of Andrew Tate. Not that one.
In Crucible Scenes, Jeff
A must-read here from two of the magazine’s brightest stars. We got Orlando Whitfield and Róisín Lanigan to play a game of snooker and this sparkler of an article was the result. History, rivalry, tactics and booze intertwine in a haze of red and yellow. Exactly what you need on a cold afternoon, whether you’re a devotee of the green baize or not.
And on that note, in case we never get the chance to bring it up again, a clipping from a 2019 Vulture interview with the great Sir Elton John.
High Viz
In December 1979, the world was reeling from the resignation of Irish taoiseach Jack Lynch, the passing of the UK Housing Bill, and Choi Kyu-hah’s nomination as successor to assassinated South Korean premier Park Chung Hee. For 150 lucky buyers in Newcastle, however, it was an even more auspicious occasion.
Yes, this month marks the 45th anniversary of the first ever edition of Viz, the best comic in British history, and arguably our greatest publication full stop.
We’ve not actually read the above issue – an original will now cost you the princely sum of £9,000 – but we are no strangers to the organ which has been a lodestar to our comic (ahem) imagination for most of our adult lives.
It’s Christmas, so we’ll presume you’re getting the annual, but if you’re not hit their site to do so now.
It Could Be You
With Issue 22 hitting newsstands, and with this newsletter being sent, we are basically done for the year. Not completely done – there will be a fair few Xmas newsletter dispatches winging their way toward you, hopefully to smash against the unbreachable wall of your out-of-office, and read in the midst of a Baileys coma at 4:52pm.
Anyway, we’ve started looking out toward next year, and Issues 23 through to 26. If you really want to write for us – irrespective of your experience – it is as easy as emailing us at editorial@the-fence.com with your very best shot. Every issue there is at least one writer who fired one in from the cold and impressed us with their pitch, we really are open to anything.
But as a steer, we’ve refreshed our pitch guide with all-new guidelines for getting in the mag in 2025. Take a read, have a think, and if you think you’ve got something in the chamber, please do send it our way.
The Good Doctorow
We’re not going to wade into the discourse surrounding murdered healthcare CEO Brian Thompson, nor the apprehension of a man in connection with the killing. Suffice to say, you’ve seen enough memes, jokes and literal tie-in merch about said event to last another eight news cycles.
But one take was good enough to stand up amid a crowded field. Canadian-American tech writer and novelist, Cory Doctorow, penned a scintillating take on the horrors of the American healthcare industry, gun crime, and a few thoughts on why ‘things like this’ are so rare.
His point is a salient one. In a country with no shortage of gun crime and, to put it mildly, an abundance of people with reasons, good or ill, to take their anger out on those at the top of society’s pyramid, Doctorow wonders why their wrath is almost always directed toward the usual victims of indiscriminate gun violence; the disconnected ranks of the poor and vulnerable. Vulnerability infinitely exacerbated after such events, as the existence of several nationwide crowdfunders exclusively dedicated to the healthcare costs of people who’ve been wounded in mass shootings, attests.
If that’s too bleak an irony for you, consider the fate of the guy who wrote a short story entitled ‘Radicalised’ in 2019. It centres on an ordinary American, who reacts to his mounting horror and humiliation at the hands of the US healthcare system, by planning and executing the murder of a health insurance CEO. Its author? One, Cory Doctorow.
In Case You Missed It
Amelia Tait in typically scintillating form on Snackfishing, for WIRED.
For the Guardian, Linda Kinstler explores the beatific process with a dispatch from the Vatican’s Dicastery for the Causes of Saints.
Some decent AI beefing between Platformer’s Casey Newton who wrote about ‘the phony comforts of AI scepticism’ and Edward Ongweso Jr, who took aim at ‘the phony comforts of useful idiots’ in response.
Ever wonder why no Americans were mentioned in the Pandora or Panama Papers? Mediapart’s Yann Philippin and Stefan Candea uncover the answer.
Jon Bois takes us on a tour of the fascinating history of slipping on banana peels.
And Finally
We’re not afraid in this office to say that – even if he holds views and sympathies that we find absolutely abhorrent, and even if his brand of masculinity reads to us like a cultural scourge that must be driven from society at the point of a bayonet – we have a soft spot for Andrew Tate, or as he’s better known, Andy. The other one.
With Manchester United entering their eleventh year of precipitous decline, it’s hard to believe that the once-mighty Mancs at the other end of the East Lancs could’ve fallen so far from the perch that Sir Alex spent decades lifting them onto. But as we saw this week, regimes collapse fast and hard. And as with the sight of wide-eyed Damascenes storming the Presidential Palace, we will always associate the fall of the House of Fergie with Andy Tate’s iconic post-match interview after the Manchester Derby in 2013.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xmWXVHBo84A
We hadn’t rewatched this 40-second clip in years, and yet every single member of the editorial team could repeat each line verbatim, with all the broad renditions of the Warrington accent that a good Andy Tate necessitates – Moyeseh, technichaliteh, gud-NIYTE.
Tate initially shied away from his spasm of public fame, after his Twitter account – which was entirely composed of replying ‘WANK TIME’ underneath the posts of Babestation models – was uncovered and circulated. But a decade on, you can still find him outside Old Trafford on a matchday, discussing what is usually another humbling defeat for the Red Devils, as he was two days ago after their 3–2 loss to Nottingham Forest.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BqrLKd5bEbE
Maybe they should’ve given it Giggseh after all.
There we are, all done. Great bit of newslettering. If you’re missing an issue, or are having some kind of warfare with the postal service, email support@the-fence.com –, which is no longer in operation. We’ll be back with you on Saturday with more links, clips, tips and tricks. Until then.
All the best,
TF