Dear Readers,
Good afternoon, and welcome to Off The Fence, a newsletter coming to you and direct from a Google Doc in Soho. Issue 18 is being daubed and decorated as we speak, and will be ready for an early December launch. As it's our ‘coming of age’ issue, we’ve pushed the boat and brought two legendary – truly legendary – writers on board. There will be further details soon.
There are now 11,000 of you reading this mail-out, which is pretty cool. But you’ll have to be fast on the draw today. The first twelve of you to subscribe to the print magazine will receive Issue 14, Issue 15 and Issue 16 for free alongside Issue 17 – that’s four magazines straight off the bat, and eight magazines for the year for just £24.99. Move quickly, and all the rest of it.
Oliver Reed’s Big Night Out
Our jar tsar, Jimmy McIntosh, went to SW20, to retrace the footsteps of Oliver Reed, celebrated in his lifetime for his heroic excesses, but now regarded by some, perhaps quite correctly, as a boorish alcoholic. No matter! As ever with Jimmy, it’s not a drunken trawl in prose, rather a masterful survey of the way that the British live and drink in the here and now. You can read it here.
Spilt French 75s And Scratched Vinyl
Cleaving to the theme of celebrating tragic alcoholics of the 1970s, we have a truly wonderful piece by Jane Rankin-Reid, in which she remembers meeting the Brothers Bernard – Jeffrey and Bruce – and their peculiar fraternal bond, one that was still noticeable even at the end of their lives. We commend the article to you all.
Hot Takes
Britney Spears’ memoir is looking to be the best celebrity memoir since…. Prince Harry’s own offering, Spare, at the start of the year. Is it not interesting that the two publishing events of the year are both celebrity memoirs? Spears’ book has already garnered outstanding reviews. For the first two years of the millennium, Britney Spears was the most desired woman on the planet, the primest interpreter of the male gaze, and she follows Emily Ratajkowski and Pamela Anderson in bringing out books in the last couple of years. Jo Hamya’s piece on the age-old conflict between brains and beauty – and the recent influx of models and actresses putting pen to page – is well worth a revisit as a companion piece.
We Can’t All Be Winners
Our competition to win a bottle of Bollinger champagne now enters its last week. It’s very simple. All you need to do is share a picture of Issue 17 with us – ideally online – and you will be in with a chance of 750ml of the good stuff. Keep them coming in! We’ve had some entries this week: Scott Darroch is trying to ‘curry favour’ with an ‘unbelievably mundane’ entry (that we love) and Patrick Galbraith took a lovely photo of the cover and said that The Fence is ‘the best British magazine to launch in years.’
And that’s a prompt to remind you that you can all win four free magazines by subscribing to the print edition today. But only the first twelve of you….
The Happiness Of Three Women
Last week, we recommended that you all go and see Powell and Pressburger’s I Know Where I’m Going! – now restored in glorious 4k at the BFI (and with a natty intro from Marty Scorsese himself). Given that the film was released in 1945, you would think that none of the cast would be with us 78 years later. But you would be wrong. Petula Clark, who is still with us at the age of 90, plays a precocious teenager. Has there been anyone in British cultural life with such a long career? Answers on a postcard, please.
Laurels Of Praise
Congratulations to Ethan Croft, who at the age of 25 is now the diarist for the Evening Standard. We look forward to more scoops: Ethan recently uncovered that Calvin Robinson is crowdfunding to pay his rent.
And we are delighted to see TF regular Mark Blacklock bring out a new book on J.G Ballard, which is an edited collection of the author’s non-fiction from 1962, and focuses on Ballard’s career as a jobbing hack – he even, would you believe it, enjoyed a brief stint as a diarist at the New Statesman.
You can see Mark live in action at Burley Fisher on Nov 6.
In Case You Missed It
Jill Kargman heads to Power Trip, the ‘Coachella for the 1%’. Coachella, of course, is Coachella for the 1%’s children.
Sarah Manavis on the predicament of posting – or not posting – during war.
Arlene Foster reveals her worst financial decision is in fact, buying shoes. And not the RHI Scandal (£500 million).
And Amelia Tait tracks down the inventors trying and failing to create a replacement for the humble umbrella.
And Finally
Dave Courtney, a writer and film star from south-east London, has departed this realm, taking his life in his Camelot Castle in Plumstead. Many have doubted Courtney’s commitment to actuality, suggesting that he was a fake gangster, or even a ‘grass’. We’re not here to pass judgement on these claims – we’re here to celebrate Dave’s passage of time, and give thanks to the Boswell to his Johnson, Liam Galvin, who directed a number of films zeroed in on Mr Courtney and his daily life. And here’s our favourite one, in which we watch Dave take a trip to the dog track, accompanied by Bev, his head of ‘security’, who has dressed for the job – and the occasion – in a leather bodice. Truly, a clip for the ages.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=88u7d6BEUrc
That’s it for this week, and we look forward to joining you again at the same time next week. And so on, every Tuesday, until eternity’s end. A brief reminder: If you’ve got any issues regarding post, you can email us at subscriptions@the-fence.com, and do remember that we have got a) that competition going on where you can win a bottle of Champagne and b) that there is a very generous offer open to those who purchase a print subscription today. Hurry hurry. Until the next time.
All the best,
TF