Dear Readers,
Good afternoon and welcome back to Off The Fence, a newsletter that’s rich in Omega 3. The biggest news of the week is that Issue 25 is here! It is already brightening up the displays at Good News on Berwick Street and the shelves of magCulture. We have yet to ensnare the cat market, however. We think this one’s a real looker (as you’ll sense below), not least because it features a cover from legendary Viz cartoonist Davey Jones.
We are, of course, exceedingly proud of our quarter-century issue, it really does look magnificent and we can’t wait for you to read it.
In very exciting news, we are now going to start taking advertising in the print magazine, with advertisers working with our art director and illustrators to create beautiful bespoke adverts, much like Blueprint did in their glory years. If this sounds like something you’d like to be involved with, then please email us at editorial@the-fence.com and we will send through our sparkling media pack.
As ever, our information buffet is varied and aromatic and remains all you can eat, free of charge.
No, Such Thing? A Free Meal!
Don’t let anyone tell you there’s no such thing as a free meal – there is. It’s an adage we’ve tried several times to put to bed, having launched the profile series Lunch for The Fence a few years ago, with the explicit intention of cadging comped meals for ourselves and our subjects. But you can’t just go banging on the kitchen door asking for a table for two. If you want to dine out on the house’s dime, you need the beneficence of food PRs, some of the most powerful and least discussed figures in modern London. Because we know most of them, we asked half-a-dozen pros to tell us how it all works.
‘We provide a luxury service,’ remarks one high-level executive. ‘Our clients are of such a high standard that we have to gatekeep for them.’ Every ritzy restaurant in the capital has an inbox full of requests from chancers of varying seniority, says another. ‘Usually these people will have around a couple thousand followers, and not many views on their reels. We try to reply to most requests and let people down gently, but some people are incredibly persistent about the ‘value’ their content can provide.’
‘There was one journalist who got hammered on complimentary bevs in their hotel room minibar, started abusing the staff in the restaurant, and had to be sent home in a cab. Another spat out their cocktail and clicked their fingers at a waiter to beckon them over. Both write for ‘luxury’ publications…’
Celebrities – ‘the Z to D-listers, anyway’ – are serial exhibitors of grand behaviour, would you believe. One PR, a rare man in the female-dominated industry, describes them ‘asking for a fully comped private party at a restaurant in exchange for a couple of Instagram stories’ – one to remember the next time you see a Love Island cast reunion at The Cocochine. This mention of malfeasance prompted another of our panel to recall one disastrous evening where, ‘despite being asked several times about dietary requirements,’ one influencer ‘announced a shellfish allergy… at a seafood restaurant.’
Journos, the cohort we reluctantly fall into, have a mixed reputation. ‘We’ve had reports of guests making passes at staff and doing drugs in the loo. Other times, some quite funny feedback, like, “why is that journalist so young?”’
Incredibly, despite offering literally hundreds of pounds a go in gratis hospitality, some PRs are finding it harder and harder to reel in the names their clients are after. ‘Journalists and influencers are spoilt for choice,’ one tells us. ‘Sometimes, a free meal just isn’t enough to entice people anymore.’
Conversely, those who show up to anything pose their own unique problem. ‘There’s one particular freelancer, a frequent offender’ the male PR tells us, ‘they wrote two pieces a year, for some blog that doesn’t look like it’s been updated since MySpace. We realised what they were up to, then they got aggy, threatening to contact our clients. But we gave the restaurant a heads-up, so their wicked little plan never worked. They still try their luck with the junior executives, and the cycle begins again.’
Frieze! (Say Rock, Come On Y’all!) Rock! (Say Frieze, Come On!)
Journalists aren’t given tickets to Wednesday morning at Frieze Week, as it’s when all the major collectors buy art, but that won’t stop us giving you an anonymous dispatch in Thursday’s Capital Letter, which you can sign up to here, and we can assure you it will be particularly juicy.
For the Love of Money
Congratulations to Max Daly, whose outstanding extended piece about Clapton, gangs and the tabloids has been nominated for ‘best feature’ at the British Freelance Journalism Awards, which really is wonderful news that makes us very pleased: a richly deserved garland for Max’s fantastic reporting. Do read the piece here.
Starm el-Sheikh
Much has been said about this government’s optics-obsessed political operators. Their polished, airless, on-message mien; their stiff, android postures. It’s true that the lanyard classes of New New Labour may not exactly inspire too much by way of human feeling, but they are, even their greatest detractors might admit, less prone to gaffe-shaped photo-ops than their more flesh-and-blood forebears. That was until a disastrous photo emerged from Keir Starmer’s jaunt to Sharm el-Sheikh yesterday, and we were reminded of an older, less dignified age.
Engineering your party’s photographical output has long been a project of British politics. Long before Ed Miliband was hobbled by a bacon sandwich, Margaret Thatcher refused to share her Concorde trip with a repatriated giant panda, perhaps because the ‘endangered species’ tag would be too good a cudgel to offer her detractors. Boris Johnson’s team routinely obscured EXIT signs at vote counts and political events, so as to avoid the obvious bounty they offered cunning subeditors. (Johnson’s practice of draping them with velvet was so regular, in fact, that it drew ire from health and safety bodies, and his former press secretary, Dylan Sharpe, claims he once climbed a ladder to unscrew one from a wall).
While TF would never salute such chicanery, we do wonder if that enterprising spirit of bloody-mindedness has departed, in the wake of Starmer’s trip to Egypt.
Taking the stage at Trump’s odd applause party in Sharm el-Sheikh, on foot of a tentative but hopeful peace deal in Israel-Palestine, Starmer was flanked by Canadian Premier, Mark Carney and Italian PM, Giorgia Meloni behind the President himself. Both his fellow leaders sported deeply mirthful looks after he was addressed by the American president, and moved forward to speak, only to immediately be pushed to the back of the line once more, resulting in this dunce cap photo-op of him returning to his proper station.
We wouldn’t dare offer Sir Keir Starmer lessons on statecraft, but we might perhaps say that offering this photo to the baying scrum of press barons desperate to knife him was an error. Never, as the saying goes about assassins, let them see your back.
Booze Cruise
Our book, The Pub, is currently enjoying a review aggregation of 4.3 stars (out of 5) on Amazon, which is pretty good going. If you’ve read it and said to yourself, ‘This is a delightful array of writing about the great British boozer from a number of authors that I like and admire,’ then you might consider leaving another brief review here, or even buying a copy from one of the hundreds of other bookstores at which The Pub is stocked. It really will make you very happy.
Monkey Tennis
Back in 2021, at the back of the widely beloved Issue 8, we published one of our most popular pieces, in which we asked a bevy of journalists for the worst pitch they’ve ever sent. If you hadn’t had the opportunity to read it yet, do dig in now, for a third ‘terrible’ pitch has left the realm of fantasy and ascended, resplendent, to actuality.
After Ed Cumming beat Sophie Elmhirst to the Ed Balls profile, and Imogen West-Knights really did get to find out what happened to the Abercrombie models, step forward Peter Robinson (not the former DUP leader, we have it on good authority).
Last month marked his turn to experience the bittersweet frisson of having his terrible pitch enacted by others without his knowledge when Lewis Capaldi did, quite genuinely, play a promo gig at an Aldi branch (sadly not the one in Lewes, nor while cape-clad).
Unfortunately, our genuine request to get Fontaines DC to review the fountains of Washington DC is yet to be realised, but our day will come.
Moving Back to the Middle Line
Friend of The Fence Jonathan Shainin is among an exciting group of journalists who are launching the new Equator magazine. Their website is currently live, featuring a strong editorial statement and a short film made by Yto Barrada.
This will be a brilliant addition to the current media landscape, seeking to provide writing on politics, culture, literature and art that steps outside of a western perspective. It’s a bold new proposition, and one that feels deeply relevant in the current moment.
They are holding a launch event at the Southbank Centre on 31 October, where Pankaj Mishra and Nesrine Malik (also part of the new Equator team) will be speaking to the brilliant novelist Hisham Matar, whose most recent work, My Friends, is well worth a read even if you can’t make the date. An exciting new magazine is on its way.
In Case You Missed It
An excellent thread on Canterbury Cathedral’s awful new graffiti from TF’s own Fergus Butler-Gallie.
A fascinating three-part read from Air Mail on the 40-year con of ‘Nicholas Rockefeller’.
An insane interactive map of all of Britain’s twinned cities and the men behind the map.
Malala Yousafzai talks very movingly about hitting a bong.
And Finally
When done right, a celeb booking can be an excellent thing, often just for the combinations of names they can produce: the Bee Gees turning on the Blackpool illuminations, Kim Kardashian opening both an Optus and a Westfields in Australia (two separate trips) and Donald Trump doing the League Cup draw. The one with staying power beyond the nominative absurdity is, however, Rod Stewart’s turn drawing names for the football, specifically the 5th round of the Scottish Cup.
The choice is not necessarily so bizarre. Rod was a footballer of some skill in his youth and has been a lifelong Celtic fan, following in the footsteps of his Scottish father. The man is, however, completely stocious. Everything from the exaggerated claw-machine grab to the shouted out numbers is fantastic, but it’s the close-ups on each ball – Rod’s hand swaying under the influence, his eyes glinting just out of focus in the background – that clinch it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3xPDBA2mSHI
Rod has recently confirmed that he had, to no one’s surprise, been on it since about 11 that morning when the Scottish FA called him up to do the show. He warned them, but they said it wasn’t a problem.
It’s an excellent watch, but on revisiting, the clip contains deeper mysteries. Why was Rod Stewart the Scottish FA’s go-to for a last-minute booking? How does Rod navigate the complex vicissitudes between his Scottish and English identities as the supposedly unifying ‘British’ identity he has previously affirmed finds itself increasingly waning amid growing nationalistic fervour – that carries a distinctly ‘English’ tone – and disgruntled Scottish calls for independence continue to question the strength of the Union? Does Rod give the President of the Scottish FA just a little squeeze on the bum as he’s introduced?
There exists, as a kind of companion to this nonsense, an entirely over-thorough breakdown of the whole clip from Limmy, who seems to have settled into the role of chaotic middle-aged Twitch streamer. If, like us, you could watch and talk about these kinds of clips for longer than you should, it’s gold dust.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GohAJsImw1Y
And that’s all for this week, were you holding on tightly? If so, do leave us a comment or a like, it’s always nice to see. Another reminder to get yourself a copy of the new Issue, it really is a belter. Sloths can hold their breaths longer than dolphins. Until next time.
All the best,
TF