Dear Readers,
Good afternoon, and welcome to Off The Fence, a newsletter that exceeds expectations. We’ve got a tight little outing for you today, but first, we have a flash sale for all you readers. Use the code DIRTY30 at the checkout and you will get 30 percent off a subscription, that’s print, digital or both, and it also applies to gift subscriptions, too. We only have 25 of these to give out, so do move with pace.
Issue 23’s international campaign reached the Baltics last week, at long last. One subscriber dangled our sharks over Tallinn, and another pulled us in for interrogation at The Corner House in Riga, former home to the Latvian secret police. Elsewhere, we were spotted in the catacombs of Westminster, bothering the tablets in the House of Lords. And another subscriber laid out his collection of magazines in a place where a good read is needed most. The battle for the Bollinger has never been closer. Send us your best to editorial@the-fence.com or tag us on social media.
A reminder, as ever, to check out the latest edition of Capital Letter – our fortnightly spread celebrating the best of London, but this newsletter also asks: why do so many new plays pretend to be television dramas? What’s with that? Our West End coverage is really motoring now: do join us here.
Capital Letter is not our only new launch, or ‘vertical’, as the creative director of a dying media brand might call it. Tomorrow, we’re dropping the first episode of our brand-new podcast series, Money’s No Object, hosted by the star of last week’s newsletter, Joe Bishop. Episode one is a sitdown with Missy Flynn, the co-founder of one of our favourite hangouts, Rita’s in Soho. You can listen to the trailer here; subscribe today on Apple, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts, and you’ll get it in your feed before everyone else.
We are open for pitches for Issue 25 and beyond, and we would love to hear your best and brightest ideas. Send them through to editorial@the-fence.com but please do have a read of the pitch guide before doing so. If you have any other questions or pointers you can reach out to us at support@the-fence.com and we’ll take it from there.
Let us go forward. On the platter this week, we have hidden gems, Dieter Rams and a documentary on personalised license plates. But right up top, we’re diving in with the sharks.
A Shark Tale
Our cover story from Issue 23 is now online, and it has been months in the making. If you’ve ever walked down Regent’s Canal and wondered what these 15-foot fibreglass singing sharks are doing in the water, then wonder no more.
The man who commissioned the artwork is one of the most fascinating figures we’ve ever profiled in our pages. Russell Gray is a self-styled anarchist property developer who has remade Bermondsey from a flagging post-industrial deadzone into one of the buzziest bits of the capital. Russell is a serial litigant – he unsuccessfully sued Marlborough College when they asked his son to leave – and is always up for a fight: after a long dispute with Southwark Council, he bought a decommissioned T-34 tank from the Czech Republic and deposited it outside the council’s offices, the gun turret pointing upwards. It is still there today.
The whole piece is available for you to enjoy, for free, on our website. It’s a sterling piece of journalism from Peter Carlyon, making his TF debut, and we urge you to read it.
(By the way, if you’ve had any dealings or interactions with Russell Gray, we’d love to hear from you via the usual channels).
Bless the Weather
Last week, when celebrating Flo Dill’s shout-out for Lauren Bensted’s superb piece on John Martyn, we realised that we didn’t attach a link to the original piece – this one here – and while re-reading the piece, it got us thinking: what are the other under-the-radar hits we’ve had over the years? The sleeper smashes, if you will. Here are 15 that you should make time for, if you haven’t done so already.
Natalie Berry’s cover story from Issue 22 tells the story of a British family of mountaineers, where the mother, Alison Hargreaves, and her son, Tom Ballard, doomed themselves to horrible deaths in the Himalayas. What drove them to such madness? Was it ego – or something closer to home?
Yoel Noorali’s short story from Issue 19 is a fantastically well-observed slice of autofiction, centering on a Camberwell pizzeria that we are confident many of you have dined at.
For a decade, Olympia Campbell has been a catwalk model, strutting her stuff for the biggest brands in the world. But, as she explains, it’s an ugly business, with a cabal of PRs, designers and photographers scrutinising your weight with feline glee.
We all know about the American Dream, but does the Channel 4 show A Place in the Sun embody the British dream (nostalgic, deluded and property-obsessed)? Eve Webster worked on the show and invites us behind the camera.
Goodbye, England’s Rose: Rebecca Fallon grew obsessed with a peculiar, grotty hotel on the Kingsland Road, and went inside to try and find out what was going on there.
Over the years, we’ve published a number of ‘my shit job’ pieces. Davey Brett's memoir of his time as a security guard at the ASDA in Hunt’s Cross in Liverpool has the funniest one-liners.
In the ‘sex and nature’ special that was Issue 17, Isobel Thompson interviewed the last members of Hampstead Heath’s centuries-old community of Travelling Showmen. It’s an absolutely dazzling feature, set among the fronds of the Vale of Health.
Now for something deeply esoteric in the Fens: Archie Cornish went and met the bracingly eccentric Lynn Gibb de Swarte, who is trying to revive the sport of bandy, a form of ice hockey that is popular in Russia and Scandinavia, which are, for obvious reasons, better suited to ice hockey.
Here’s a grotty slice of Soho history as Jane Rankin-Reid remembers a memorable evening with the two brothers Bernard, Bruce and Jeffrey, both towards the end of their gin-soaked lives.
Helmed by Fergus Henderson and Trevor Gulliver, the Clerkenwell restaurant St. JOHN is the most influential restaurant in the country – but what’s it like to work there? It’s safe to say that Ian Trueger had an ‘offally good’ time there.
Even though the sky today is bruised and grey, London’s summer is now in motion, and Grace Linden’s wonderfully observed piece is the ideal read, as she talks to the men who use the outside gym in a Hackney park.
Asad Raza’s guide to making millions from your postcolonial trauma is adroitly sustained at length. From Rushdie with Love!
All the way back in Issue 7, the prize-winning author Rebecca Watson wrote a formally playful short story for us, entitled ‘The Nothing Game’, one of the most exciting bits of fiction we’ve ever carried.
Let’s finish with some dogging. In Kent, the Garden of England. A dispatch on dogging. Dogging. Written by Hussein Kesvani. Read it here.
Alleluia I’m A Bum
Prankster, esotericist, polymath and by all accounts, a great pint: these are the attributes shared by friend of The Fence, Mark Blacklock, and the subject of his latest feature, Jeremy Beadle.
When Mark told us of the existence of the ‘Beadlean Library’ – that is, the collection of bizarre books hidden behind a trap door in the home of one of Britain’s most legendary light-entertainers – we were agog, and commissioned him on the spot. The end result is a tender tribute to Beadle himself, and the interests he joyfully incubated off-camera. Read this fantastic story, for free, right here.
You’re Welcome
Regular readers (especially those in the national press) will know that, every now and then, we proffer up a lead for a massive scoop that’s just about to break. It’s that time again! The story, should you choose to accept it, regards a disruptive new force in British politics, one that could play a very large role in the next parliament – should their career survive the imminent scandal heading their way. If that sounds tantalising to you… drop us a line through the usual channels.
No Scrubs
‘This is it,’ I thought, ‘this is the day you stop caring.’
William Rayfet Hunter’s piece from Issue 23 has just gone up on our website. He was a doctor for over half a decade before Covid hit. His essay reveals how the resultant chaos led him to leave a career he thought he would devote his life to. It’s a brilliant piece and his new novel Sunstruck has seen him listed as one of the Observer’s best new novelists of 2025.
Arms Around the World
Some pretty good linkage there, right? If you want to dig deep into the archive then you can treat yourself to a digital subscription, with 30 percent off with that code mentioned at the top.
Or you can treat yourself to a print magazine – much better in our view – or one of the archive jewels from our back catalogue. Knock yourself out.
Brentwoodfellas
Any documentary that begins with: ‘It had come to this. Two men called Nigel on a driveway in Essex.’ immediately has our attention. This wonderful little short from 2006 delves into the world of personalised number plates, and centres on two men, one with the numberplate N1GEL, the other rocking a N2GEL. Thanks, as ever, to the great Christopher Coates for the recommendation.
Bet-Bruton
At the start of the year, we declared that Merlin Labron-Johnson is the most exciting chef in the country, and that you should get yourself to Bruton, and quick, before his restaurant, Osip, scores a second star and becomes unbookable. The Somerset countryside is particularly beautiful in the weeks before Glastonbury festival, and now, you can make a weekend of it, as Osip have opened a series of extraordinarily tasteful yet approachably priced rooms above the restaurant. We couldn’t recommend a visit more.
In Case You Missed It
Joanna Biggs celebrates Madonna’s decades-long refusal to compromise and apologise.
‘A literary feat and deeply humane’: a rave review for Lamorna Ash’s wonderful new book, which we very much encourage you to buy here.
King Charles III shouts out his favourite Bradford restaurant.
‘Eating with Tod’ has an 8.5kg Tasmanian king crab boiled for his consumption.
For the LRB, Dinah Birch asks: why do the British love a good murder?
Fountains of Wayne! The Lineker brothers have buried the hatchet.
And Finally
Many know Werner Herzog as the doyen of grumpy German artists, and he is good. His hatred for the stupidity of chickens, his adoration for the vile fornication of the jungle, and his regret at speaking French at gunpoint are all good examples. His interview with us about lockdown in Issue 7 – which was very real, even though people thought it wasn’t – is another classic of the form. And yet, Werner might just have to bow to legendary designer Dieter Rams as his senior both in age and sheer withering force.
Here is a phenomenal video – a clip from Gary Hustwit’s documentary Rams – of Dieter touring a design storeroom. He begins with an assessment of the Marshmallow Sofa: ‘I liked George Nelson very much, but I never understood what he meant by that.’ Dieter quickly moves his attention to Marc Newson’s Lockheed Longue, a chaise longue plated in polished, riveted, aluminium: ‘Here is something I really don’t like… we hear “design just means expensive.” Things like this are what lead to that.’ The piece sold for £2,434,500 at Phillips, London in 2015.
It’s fantastic to watch Rams swing his cane around like a rifle, wielding it with the earned authority of one of the most important designers of the 20th century. His ten principles of good design – usefulness, longevity, simplicity – inspire his most brutal attack in this video: ‘Frank Gehry is not a friend of mine, neither personally nor as an architect’.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ypyAg3Zbs_8
There we have it. If you want a subscription – for print, digital or both – you can have 30% off with promo code DIRTY30. If you want single issues, maps or totes, head to the shop page and get your fill. And if you want to know something amusing, the Atholl Highlanders, a kilted regiment based at Blair Castle in Perthshire, are the only private army still legally recognised anywhere in Europe. Catch you next week.
All the best,
TF