Dear Readers,
Good afternoon and welcome back to Off The Fence, a newsletter hand-rolled from the finest tobacco leaves.
Before we go any further, an urgent message. The distant war drums of Issue 26 grow closer with every day, so for everyone subscribed and awaiting their beat, please ensure you have got your subscription up to date with us. If you need to update your address, head over to the website, log in to your account and make the necessary changes.
Our inbox has been flooded with wonderful pictures proving that the quarter-century issue is impervious to any winter blues. It has continued to visit some ancient sights bearing witness to the pyramids in Uxmal, all while staying plugged in at home while speeding down to Brixton on the Vicky line.
The pearler of the week perhaps belongs to this gorgeous picture of the issue with both a dog and a rainbow in the Lake District.
What more is there? The contest for best picture then is absolutely red-hot, even as the weather is ice-cold. Do keep them coming in at editorial@the-fence.com.
Now, for those of you like receiving two magazines of post in a week from a quarterly magazine, the opportunity presents itself for a licit thrill: subscribe today and you’ll get Issue 25 by Friday, and you’ll get Issue 26 next week, which is thrilling stuff for everyone concerned.
For those of you in the know – and it’s a pleasing large number of you these days – another installation of Capital Letter, our bi-weekly guide to London life will be hitting its subscribers later this week. It came from a realisation that, despite the number of publications creating ‘what to do in London’ lists, none of them were particularly funny, and their recommendations were often hit or miss or bore the unmistakable hand of the PR firm. On Thursday, we’ve got some strong words about restaurateurs’ obsession with the ‘pub model’, and how they get it wrong – and another clubbing dispatch too. Sign up here.
This week we’ve got a historians’ feud and a bit of accidental Partridge, but we begin with an unlikely, possibly unholy, crossover: the Greggs Pub, courtesy of Stephen Smith.
Wey Aye Man
On my way through Newcastle city centre to try out the new pub that Greggs has opened, I passed a boozer of the old school, the kind of place where men sit over their pints like Inuits at ice-holes. On the rainy street, the cellarman was taking delivery of a large quantity of kegs. I wondered what they reminded me of and I realised it was the scene in Jaws when Hooper and Quint are stowing floats aboard the Orca, enough to weary their monstrous quarry after it takes the bait. If this pub resembled a whaler, or perhaps a sharker, the Golden Flake Tavern, as Greggs have called their place, is more like a pleasure steamer or cruise ship. It flies the rainbow colours of inclusivity.
Don’t get me wrong: the Golden Flake is as straight as they come. This is Newcastle, after all, where the lads at St James’s Park watch the Toon without their shirts on, and are still overdressed compared to the women on a night out. The pub is on the first floor of Fenwick’s department store: like Greggs, a North East institution. The vibe is that of a rugby club bar, with its dark brown furniture and prints of early motor cars. A collection of Toby jugs leers from the top of a cabinet. The ambience hardly screams ‘gay bar’. There are families, couples, old dears taking a breather from the shopping and trying out ‘this new place’ as a change from the café in Marks and Sparks.
No, it’s only when you study ‘the offer’ of the Golden Flake that you see what a boldly diverse, saturated-colour – and highly calorific – world we could be living in. It gives the lie to the old joke that a Geordie is someone who thinks ‘metrosexual’ is a blow job on the city’s underground.
The pub serves blush-hued Pink Jammie Pale Ale (£6.50 a pint), with bass notes of doughnut, as well as a matching cocktail, the Pink Jammie Fizz (lemonade, prosecco and Greggs’ patent syrupy mix: £11.50 a pop). On date night, they’re the perfect his ‘n’ hers tipples, or theirs ‘n’ theirs. They would go well with a ‘Barbie-themed’ hen do, or stag. Also on tap is Gosforth 1939 Stottie Lager, a bespoke brew named after the place and date that the bakery chain was founded (also £6.50 a pint).
But what are the steak bake people doing getting mixed up in the hospitality racket in the first place? They say they’re offering a ‘fresh twist to the traditional British pub (with) a unique Greggs experience’. The Golden Flake is a pop-up pub, open until February, with an option to extend. One London-based food writer declined to make the 500-mile round trip, calling it a publicity stunt. Admittedly, the chain has form here: it’s offered candlelit dinners on Valentine’s night and egged on Piers Morgan to sample a vegan sausage roll live on TV (he spat it out).
Against that, there’s the menu at the Golden Flake. A jaded epicure, weary of balut (fertilised duck eggs, to you), surfeited with cobra hearts, would snap a napkin over his or her lap with alacrity at the prospect. Yes, there is the gruff and manly sausage roll, like Nick Knowles in a pastry gilet (served with Bloody Mary ketchup, £4.25). But there is also the Pink Jammie Trifle (£6.50), an extraordinary dessert which makes the toothsome confectionery in a Wayne Thiebaud painting look like overnight oats. It consists of a doughnut sunk in jelly and topped with custard, cream, and pink frosting the colour and consistency of your nan’s Euthymol toothpaste. It’s a dish that Willie Wonka would be proud of, rotting your gnashers but giving them a polish at the same time. The Golden Flake samples the cuisine of the building site and the nursery alike, in a pioneering fusion of snap tin and dollies’ tea party.
Back on the street, where a man was taking an inordinate time over a leak behind the bins, I told a woman that my lunch at the pub came to £29. She pulled a face. ‘Too expensive, but I do go in there’, she said, waving at the shop immediately next door to the pub. It was another Greggs (there are 21 branches in the city). I told a bloke in a hi-vis jacket about the baker’s new venture. ‘Do they do alcohol? I’ll try it!’ he enthused. If you ask me, Greggs has done itself no harm by taking colas (and beer) to Newcastle.
You should follow Stephen on ‘X’ here.
The Graduate
‘I blinked. ‘So… just British people then?’ She wished me luck and hung up.’
Imagine being sold a wonderful thing, a magic key that will unlock that most elusive of things: the door to opportunity. Then imagine that, as you try to use said key, it opens nothing at all, and instead actually makes the door three times thicker, iron plated and alarmed.
As Nicole Fan found out the hard way, this is what can happen to those coming to the UK on a graduate visa. The promise held out is a heady one. Post-graduation, visa-holders can stay and work in the UK for two years without needing a job offer or an employee sponsorship and have the freedom to work in pretty much whatever field they want. It may well have seemed too good to be true, but for the fact that it is a genuine government-issued scheme, not an all-expenses-paid trip to Bali for 50 quid.
Despite holding two degrees, Nicole discovered just how hard it is for a legitimate visa-holder to get a job here and what a precarious place that can leave people in.
Handbags at Dawn
Those of you who reckon Twitter to be a dead platform will be dismayed to learn that two eminent literati, namely Niall Ferguson and William Dalrymple, have been going at it hammer and tongs on the microblogging website. Rather than banter over who last wrote an original work of history – possibly a more germane source of debate – there has been a volley of personal insults, which really does make it much more fun for the rest of us.
We have to say it is advantage Ferguson after the tweet above, but rather than draw attention to ignoble moments in the history of the Hamilton-Dalrymple clan, might we suggest that he keep his barbs in the present day and ask: William Dalrymple, why, given your strong words about injustices all around the world, are you so infrequently critical of the government of Narendra Modi?
The Life of Reilly
One of the lead features from Issue 25 is now online for you all to read. Andy Lee is a straight-talking straight man from Dublin who has made a fortune in gay porn, and has now set up the world’s first ‘gay-for-pay’ university in the flatlands of the Hertfordshire-Cambridgeshire border. Andy, who has penned a self-published memoir entitled Smelly Kid, is helping working-class men make bank in the OnlyFans era – and is rightly proud of doing so. You can read Gary Grimes’ feature on him here, and then watch Ed Campbell’s video interview with him afterwards, if you so desire.
Slam Frank
Some of you will have already Zara Meerza’s piece in the current issue about the unseemly male obsession with Anne Frank, and there has been yet another unnerving development in the world of Frankophilia, namely this new off-Broadway musical, which asks the question: ‘did Anne Frank ever acknowledge her white privilege?’ If anyone based in the ‘Big Apple’ has seen the show, we would, regrettably, like to know more.
McGowan’s Gamble
The radio programme A Good Read is not one of the week’s most talked about affairs. For most of us it quietly passes us by week on week, or occasionally drifts into our ears from an errant radio. But it can offer gold, as it did at the start of this month. This was all thanks to a quality bit of accidental Patridging that Alistair McGowan did opposite former First Minister of Scotland, Nicola Sturgeon.
Nicola’s pick was a predictably intense choice, but a good one: Elif Shafak’s Honour, a tale about a family who move to London only to be torn apart by an honour-killing. It’s intense stuff which McGowan began to weigh in against with real tact and class. His first remark is that, before he’d got through the first 20 pages, he was ‘calling the book on and on and on and honour’. The quip didn’t go down well, and in true Partridge style, he kept digging.
Within the next few minutes, he’d talked about writing boobs upside down on a calculator before recommending a book set during World War Two, where a pilot crash lands in occupied France and falls in love with the young, possibly underage, daughter of the family who take him in. It’s a top-class appearance.
Snap Happy
One not just for the diary, but literally right now – The Story Lens Talks: London comprises the work of 10 promising photographers, interspersed with video installations of interviews with each of them discussing their practice. The show focuses on the art of storytelling in photography and includes work by Domenici herself, as well as artists like Sam Robinson, Frank Linders and Matthew Joseph. Things kick off this evening with an opening at the salubrious Noho Galleries from 6-8 pm and the show remains on view through Thursday.
A Magical Time of Year
Our incredibly good book, The Pub, has ‘got stocking filler written all over it’ in the words of a certain style bible, and we echo the sentiment: it really is the ideal gift for a difficult uncle or truculent godchild, but you really could – and should – give it to anyone. Right now, it is vastly reduced on everyone’s favourite website under the auspices of ‘Black Friday’, so do hoover up multiple copies if you’re planning to dish them out like confetti next month.
More Than a Miscellany
Ben Schott’s latest offering, the nattily titled Schott’s Significa, has been causing much merriment in the office. Across 53 chapters, the esotericist decodes the secret languages of subcultures across the globe, from sommeliers to spies. Graydon Carter calls the book ‘The Rosetta Stone for modern times’ and it also features a fantastic comic strip from Davey Jones. Unlock your copy here.
Sub Me Up
Now that Charli XCX and the Duchess of Rutland have joined the platform, the question remains: have we reached Peak Substack? Short answer: no. Introducing Wants, a courier service for memories.
There are millions of objects available to buy online; most are crap, some are quite interesting. A small number of them are undeniably and emphatically special.
Wants is a regular pocket-sized analysis of such an object. It brings you the most interesting things money can buy and unpacks their importance; from a 17th-century parenting guide to a landscape painting owned by the frontman of Kraftwerk.
Wants makes a case for things –a compelling argument for collecting and accumulating strange and rare objects with compelling stories. Sign up here.
Hark the Herald Angels Sing
Did you know that the vicar of Soho, the Reverend Simon Buckley, was one of the puppeteers on the original series of Spitting Image? (He operated Margaret Thatcher’s right hand). Simon, who is an absolutely charming man, is hosting a night of ‘Carol-oake’ with a live pianist at St Anne’s Church on 11 December, and tickets are available here – it will be a raucous affair. We hope to see some of you there.
In Case You Missed It
One of many brilliant Japanese festivals involving large groups of people running at each other in costume.
The most unfortunately named politician has returned: Adolf Hitler Uunona wins re-election in Namibia.
Nicolas Maduro has taken an interesting approach to growing tensions with the US.
Orson Welles interviews the makers of the muppets in one of the greatest talk show bits of all time.
Why is the CPS appealing the decision against the Quran-burning Hamit Coksun? Are they secretly desperate for a backdoor blasphemy law?
Henry Dyer and Rob Evans profile Lord Dannatt, one of the greatest rotters in the British body politic.
Wait till you hear who appeared at the terminus of Larry Summers’ tenure at Harvard. You literally won’t believe it.
And Finally
Some enterprising soul has done us all a public service and spliced, repurposed and shared The Secret Life of Human Pups. It was released in early 2016, a gentler time in history, where TV producers could, quite easily, have programmes commissioned which didn’t track a middling comedian on a travelogue, but record the lives of men (and a few women) who live to don skintight latex suits and bark and woof like a dog.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m3eqIWq0ir8
The programme mainly follows Tom, a man so dedicated to his hobby that he has split up with his fiancée, and reaches its conclusion at a competition in Antwerp. As you will observe, the continental hounds don’t have such an innocent interpretation of puppydom.
That’s that for today. However, we will be back tomorrow, with the announcement of something really very exciting indeed. If you’d like to speak to us about an order, please drop us a line at support@the-fence.com – and do ensure your address is updated. All other correspondence to editorial@the-fence.com. Your eyeballs remain the same size from birth to death, never changing. Until the next time.
All the best,
TF