Dear Readers,
Good afternoon and welcome back to Off The Fence, a newsletter that makes a magazine four times a year.
We do hope you’re enjoying Issue 28, which should now be with all UK subscribers. From our perspective, we are unbelievably proud of it. It contains Cormac Kehoe’s first solo byline in the magazine for starters, as well as the longest and most ambitious feature we have ever published. Sophie Heawood and John Niven’s columns return, and alongside them stars both new and old: Fergus Butler-Gallie, Clive Martin, Lucy Peett, James Ramsden, Zara Meerza and Stuart McGurk. But what might make this the best one yet is that alongside all this gold, it has one of the most bumper ETC sections in yonks, covering campness, civil war, abstract mathematics, Reform and the stock exchange. It’s fizzing with life.
People are absolutely loving it too. There has been praise already from Paul Lay and David James. The magazine has been taken to the Great British Seaside and it’s been on Nicholas Morgan’s laptop and it’s been given the big five stars from the Guardian.
All of these people got their mitts on the mag as they are subscribers and didn’t have to suffer the ignominy of walking to the shops in the baking heat. You can join them here.
After the successful victory of Tim ‘Sycamore Gap’ Walker, which saw him take home a very fine bottle indeed, the race opens up once more. Saddle your steeds and send us the best pictures of the magazine ‘in the wild’ (again, that doesn’t technically mean with nature, but animal and landscape pictures are always stunners). All pictures to be sent in to editorial@the-fence.com. Get bold, get creative, there’s fizz on the line.
So, with the fanfare at full blast, let’s have a mosey down the red carpet of our making.
What’s the Story, Morning Rory?
During the 2024 US Presidential Election, Rory Stewart made an infamous prediction that Kamala Harris would romp into the White House. What is less well-known is that he bet quite a significant amount of money on her victory – ‘ the maximum I was allowed’ as per this piece in the Daily Express. Well, how much is too much for this centrist pin-up?
Multiple well-placed insiders have told us that this sum of money was £100,000. Stewart denied the story when we put it to him.
If Only the Walls Could Talk
Evgeny Lebedev was memorably profiled by Miles Ellingham and Cormac Kehoe two summers ago, and the piece still stands up very well indeed. Now his Hampton Court estate, Stud House, is up for sale for £25 million, which seems somewhat undervalued for such a ‘unique’ property. Do any of our readers have any memories of memorable visits to Stud House? We know that some of you do…
Pitch, Please
We have a slot apiece in ‘facts’ and ‘features’ for the autumn issue, and if you have some brilliant up your sleeve, then we would love to hear from you – send through your best to editorial@the-fence.com and we’ll take it from there.
Am I Allowed to Laugh?
News this week has invited some uneasy side glances about what is OK to find amusing, and what is straight-up disturbing. If you’re toeing the line of online etiquette vis-a-vis humour, might we suggest perusing the guide published in Issue 8 by Josh Dell? He knocks your tweet and text compositions into shape. ‘The idea of “leaving” haha behind is a point increasingly made, with lol often shamed as a millennial hangover.’ Arguably, much has changed since the guide was first written. ‘Lol’ is now cooler than ‘haha’ – and certainly than ‘he he’ or ‘hu hu’. But may we also wager ROTOLO, the Italian version of lol, and which is surprisingly handy in the annals of WhatsApp, if nothing else than to break things up? Also, ROFL and LMFAO. Or, even a simple ‘omg’ (lower-cased). Nothing wrong with the classics. While we’re on the topic, the laughing emoji feels fresher than it did in 2021, as does the laughing cat, the latter a very slightly sweeter version of the former, and one that is especially useful with your most unbiddable friends.
I Hate Garden Gnomes
In better media news, Sirin Kale’s journalism has once again been leading the headlines with her revelations about former BBC star Ashley Cain’s Twitter conduct. It’s a brilliant piece and pretty vile reading, but what it has proved to us is that nothing sets the internet alight as much as a hate watch these days. There are, would you believe it, whole YouTube channels dedicated to compiling football fans’ reactions to their teams losing, just so their rivals can laugh at them from their sofas. Well, it’s the same with Cain, who has long had a legion of haters who gathered on sites which all true muckrakers will know. They greeted the article with sheet jubilation and a slurry of rather creative insults, although several comparisons between Ashley Cain and garden gnomes felt a little harsh to us.
Lindisfarne Away Days
Are all football chants born equal? Unlikely – take the Viking rowing. A Norway supporter Emil Anners Lappen went on Sky this week to clarify that the conceit of the whole thing is based on abject lies. ‘It drives me crazy,’ he said. ‘The Vikings did not row across the Atlantic – they sailed.’ He conceded that they did row down rivers, but the point stands that doing a group mime of rowing a boat is built on shaky ground.
Baby, You’re a Firework
Although we at The Fence like to consider ourselves the last word in cultural commentary, we can also admit when we are wrong. Thank you Ben, for correctly identifying Orlando Bloom – narrowly ousting Tom Hiddleston – as the defining uncool celebrity menacing public life. Reasons, need we list them, include being divorced from Katy Perry (somehow worse than being married to Katy Perry), the viral 2016 naked paddleboarding excursion, his day in the life from the Sunday Times (starting with 20 minutes of Buddhist chanting every morning), among many, many others.
Et ITV2, Brute?
Another year, another series of Love Island, which is now approaching its bitter end. But, if you haven’t yet had a proper fill of Casa Amor, go back and read about Snake Denton’s adventures auditioning for Love Island in Issue 25. It was a desperate measure in response to desperate times: ‘Although I believed I was the kind of boy who liked bums, boobs, and Megan Barton-Hanson, I wondered why sex left me cold, and why intimate relationships with women filled me with dread.’ It might leave a bad taste.
In Case You Missed It
A jungle set in a Japanese rice field.
Incredible work is being done with the ChinARoonie.
The Chinese graduate accused of being Mexico’s ‘fentanyl king’.
And Finally
Readers of this mail-out will remember when we covered the truly bizarre film that was Sean Connery’s Sir Billi: a truly bizarre highland romp. Well, we have another film for you which we feel is a phenomenal way to spend one of these warm summer eves. Gather some friends, have plenty of drinks and when you are good and hooned, stick on Love on a Leash. It’s a rom-com about a man who is transformed into a dog by some kind of nondescript curse and falls in love with a beautiful woman. There were no beautiful dogs left, unfortunately.
One of its strengths is actually how it looks. It does not suffer from the fluorescent lighting of Netflix series of the past ten years, nor does it do that ‘Prestige TV’ thing of blurring the background in almost every frame, which makes it look like all characters are in a perennial Zoom meeting in a home they don’t want to show their colleagues. Or a square Instagram photo from 2013 where only a tiny circle in the middle is clear, and it’s very important to use every possible filter. Apart from the fact that this new obsession with blurring everything over a character’s shoulder looks crazy, it’s frustrating because we want to see the set! Love on a Leash does just that, and what an offering it makes. The set pieces are fabulous, complete with long noughties items including XL pearl necklaces draped over bedside tables, circular shopping racks in pink-tinted malls, aqua-marine lamps, lime-green walls and hemp curtains. There are also some wonderful camera angles, including having us perched on the parquet floor watching a pair of sling-back kitten heels skulk back and forth in an argument scene, as well as from the corner of a microwave (?) handily cutting off the corner of the beautiful girl’s head while she’s on the phone to a friend sitting in a pitch black room save for the spotlight on her face.
Everyone likes bad good films – Oppenheimer comes to mind in view of another Nolan summer – but what about the good bad ones?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dbtZt1NDyE8
We will be back on Thursday to launch a very big story. In the meantime, please do send through photos to editorial@the-fence.com and please send all admin-related questions to support@the-fence.com. Botanically speaking, bananas are berries.
All the best,
TF