Dear Readers,
Good afternoon and welcome to Off The Fence, a newsletter with considerable potential. It’s all go around here – Issue 26 is launching tomorrow, and the copies are inbound to subscribers, having left the Southwark warehouse this very morning. Issue 26 is the PRINT SPECIAL, and the design, overseen by Mathias Clottu, is a departure from the staid elegance that has become our calling card. Our central feature is an oral history of the print magazine in the 21st century, in which luminaries like Ian Hislop, Graydon Carter, Andrew Neil and Jo Ellison explain how the medium found a way to exist in the age of the iPhone – and what print’s future might be. The whole issue is a celebration of all things inky, and we can’t wait to show you more tomorrow. Have a gander at the first spread of the big piece before the cover reveal tomorrow.
Today, we’ve got a truly unbelievable video of Sir Keir Starmer and some schoolchildren. But first, let’s remind you of what we have on offer.
Wonderful World, Beautiful Prizes
Do you like expensive wine, designer handbags and Michelin-starred lunches? Or, at the very least, do you know someone who does? Then you should enter our prize draw, The Fence’s Fighting Fund, where you can win something incredible. The top billing is a night at Osip, where you’ll get a night at the auberge and also a meal for two in the restaurant, alongside the wine pairing. The whole thing will cost you £1500 – but you won’t be paying, you’ll be feasting at what Time Out regard as the best restaurant in the country.
Then we’ve got vouchers at Mountain in Soho, Updown Farmhouse in Kent and six bottles of Chateau Musar 2018. Plus a very natty KNWLS bag too. There’s a whole host of other prizes – like a pub crawl with our pints correspondent, Jimmy McIntosh – we’ve got about 40 things to be won, and so far we’ve had 198 entrants so the chances of bagging something brilliant are still high. There are even three lifetime subscriptions to be scored.
All the proceeds will go to expanding our editorial mission next year, to do more investigations and to hire more editorial staff, as we try and make The Fence the best print magazine in the country.
Requiescat in Pace
A lot of top hitters are departing this mortal coil, and at a rapid rate. Pam Hogg, Jilly Cooper, Tom Stoppard, Diane Keaton and now Martin Parr – all wonderful, talented people who never pulled the ladder up. Might Parr be the most influential British artist of this century? Discuss, if you will. What a warm and quizzical eye he had – a salutary lesson to all of us vipers working with words. As Charles Darwent relays in his Guardianobit of Parr, the photographer’s earlier efforts were misread by his peers as sneering and reactionary. Too many British flags, they thought.
It’s very much worth your time finding an hour for the documentary of his life, made by a Frenchman, but following the most English of artists on his final journeys around the country. Available on iPlayer here.
The Purple Scare
The Mitford sisters are, once again, back in the public eye. (Have they ever left?) So, naturally, our intrepid correspondent Rory MacNeish went to get his piano tuned by Ben Treuhaft, the son of Decca, fifth of the six Mitford girls. Sporting a pristine purple goatee, Treuhaft holds court on sexy Steinways and his mother’s lefty politics which led her to flee to the US, where presumably she never received a Christmas card from brother-in-law Oswald Mosley. It’s not one to miss.
Waning Ju-Pater
Father-son relationships can be complex at the best of times – so imagine how you’d feel about your dad adopting Tantric Magick and taking the name ‘Zir Komselha 444’. In our latest edition, the brilliant Tamlin Magee takes us on a journey through the life of his father Michael. Hard-drinking yet magnetically charismatic, ‘Mad Mike’, as he was known, had complicated relationships with his close ones. His true calling, it seems, was Tantra, the ancient Indian spiritual system which led him to an initiation in a Gujurati shack by a Cockney socialist known as Dadaji. For more of this extraordinary story, read on.
Godders!
The ‘Dulwich Farage’ story continues to carry, pulling up more and more details along with it. The list of witnesses attesting to the man’s alleged comments has now reached 28 – no mean feat in the world of investigative journalism, where people are, understandably, reticent about putting their name to allegations.
If it’s possible, let’s cast our minds back to simpler times, when the idea of Farage as PM was a slightly boring joke on Mock the Week rather than a genuine possibility. To get you there, here’s a classic of the period, where UKIP’s then-economics spokesperson flew into a farcical rage at a question from Michael Crick.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jzPBn5SLcxE
You’re Being Mogged, Mr Ambassador
Last week, we recommended you an excellent TBIJ article about Geeth Sooriyapura, the Sri Lankan influencer flooding the UK media space (or more specifically right-wing pensioners media space) with AI generated anti-immigrant slop. It’s part of the new frontier in politics: the Wild West of social media diplomacy.
Nowhere has this been more disruptive (to use the tech bro lexicon) than in the world of diplomacy. The diplomat of old tended to be a senior figure, doing a great deal of their work behind closed doors, at dinners and in a distinctly measured fashion. Diplomatically. But increasingly, governments are looking towards bringing in a new wave of ambassadors, both ‘cultural’ and official, who can play the digital game.
Taiwan’s new ambassador to Finland, one Freddy Lim, is perhaps the apotheosis of this new politician. In fairness to Freddy, he has been in politics at a local level since 2015, but he made his name as a death metal frontman. His musicianship is not, however, a stray quirky fact about him, it’s actually a serious boost to his position. He has been duly shipped off to the nation with the highest number of metal bands per capita where he has been dazzling his new hosts. This is despite the fact that he was, in his youth, a staunch Chinese unionist. A change of heart and 66,000 followers does a lot in this new diplomatic era.
Like much of government functions these days, this online diplomacy is being increasingly outsourced to private firms. Money is now regularly flowing into the pockets of influencers around the world who are smart enough to see the money that can be made. Some of the players might feel obvious. Saudi Arabia paid many influencers to promote various festivals over the years to try and was the stain of Jamal Khashoggi’s death from the mouths of potential tourists and investors. Likewise, China has long been interested in using its ‘wolf warriors’ to ‘tell China’s stories well’.
But it is happening in a much wider arena than you might expect. Russia has been aggressively targeting Spain with propaganda aimed at sapping support for a prolonged war. Similarly, the British government has in recent years been getting on the digital diplomacy train. The Home Office has had a contract worth around £10million with a certain Zinc Network to produce content via influencers. The purpose of the content has been varied: counteracting misinformation in Eastern Europe, trying to dissuade migrants from crossing in small boats and setting up a media platform called This Is Woke,which was designed to target British Muslims in a counterterrorism operation, doing very little to disclose its Home Office origins. Most concerningly, one of the main minds behind Zinc Network is Scott Brown, an ex-Tory spin doctor and former employee at now disgraced PR firm Bell Pottinger.
Some Festive Cheer
Thank you to everyone who has donated to The Fence’s Fighting Fund, and shared our message. Former Spectator supremo and current New World editor-at-large Matthew D’Ancona calls The Fence a ‘must-read’ and ‘erudite, funny and unique’, while Alex Bilmes simply says ‘I must have gone soft in my dotage.’ Bron Maher, our cruising correspondent, writes ‘Let’s Gooooooo’ – and who are you to deny him further commissions?
Either way, we welcome all messages and donations – if you are worried about giving money to Crowdfunder, and not to this august publication, you can select ‘£0’ under custom tip and the money will flow exclusively our way.
Backstory’s Back, Alright
The indie bookshop that has sold so many copies of our pubbook, has a great book subscription called Read The World, which make for very good – and, crucially, very easy – Christmas presents. Subscribers get a non-fiction book about a different country posted to them each month.
The club is run by Backstory’s founder, the ex-Economist hack turned enthusiastic book-flogger Tom Rowley, who picks a range of politics, memoir, economics and history and promises to take readers on a ‘global tour, covering issues like climate change, border disputes and trade wars as well as the politics of relationships and the workplace around the world’.
You can get a 3, 6 or twelve-month voucher to give on the day. The recipient can then choose where they want their books sent to, with free postage anywhere in the UK. TF readers get 10% off before Christmas with the code FENCE10. Sign up here.
Hot Toddy
Britain’s highest-paid shit-eating grin, Tod Inskip (better known as Eating With Tod), has launched his Christmas market right near us in Tottenham Court Road. Bathing in the glow of the Outernet lights, the food is what you expect: each item needs a buzzword ingredient (truffle, nduja, lobster) and an annoying name, some of it seems okay, a lot of it doesn’t, and no it is not cheap. Whodathunkit? Dispensed from depressing grey shacks, it is a classic example of the vast gap between content and reality that makes the USSR’s White Sea-Baltic Canal seem like a real bang-up job by comparison.
What is interesting is the degree of rage figures like Tod inspire. Authentocrat Hackneyites along with the Daily Mail have been cueing up for a bit of Tod hatred (although the latter did encourage its readers to attend initially). Even the bracingly right-wing Pimlico Journal is in on the Tod hate, posting this vicious review of his market. To be clear, we are not standing apart from the mob and wagging our finger here; we hate him too, we hate him just like you. Is this the main point of bipartisan agreement in the country at the moment?
But stepping shakily off the hate-train, might we recommend some better sources for your food info? There’s Isaac Rangaswami’s excellent Caffs Not Cafes along with his newer venture Wooden City and, of course, the great Vittles, which is on a brilliant run of form at the moment. We also can’t help but mention that there’s a really wonderful newsletter called Capital Letter run by a certain magazine that seems to really know its onions.
In Case You Missed It
Clare Considine speaks to three protestors currently on hunger strike.
Our new favourite Instagram is a man speedrunning ‘irl’ locations such as the Natural History Museum.
Some lovely old footage of Mikheil Saakashvilli chewing his tie.
A wonderful Japanese stop-motion animation from 1972.
Bloomberg profiles another skeezy Weinstein.
Luke Turner looks back on Covent Garden in the early 20th century.
And Finally
We’re not usually purveyors of brain rot at The Fence, but in the interests of keeping our fingers on ‘the pulse’, we found it impossible to ignore the latest trend sweeping the globe - that of ‘6-7’. Confused? You’re not alone, despite many an attempt to explain this fad in the past few months.
Some history: in February, Philadelphia rapper Skrilla released his song Doot Doot (6 7), which swiftly went viral due to its usage in edits of professional basketball players of the same height. And that’s it. ‘6-7’ has since been the scourge of teachers and parents across the country, as mere mention of the two numbers will send all young children into a hypnotised frenzy.
As it turns out, so too our very own Prime Minister. On a recent school visit, Keir Starmer snapped to attention and assumed the form of a twitching robot upon hearing the numbers read out by a girl in primary school.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=14bfI_tD2NA
Starmer was then chastised by a teacher for joining in on the fun, but like any cheeky schoolboy, he walked out of the class with a grin plastered across his face. We haven’t seen him smile like that in years.
Starmer, to be fair, is not alone. Watch as Wembley Stadium’s hard men couldn’t help but join in on the craze the other day. Neil Warnock would be turning in his grave.
We will try to keep our readers updated on all the latest slang from now on. However, this dispatch comes with a disclaimer that we may already be behind the times…Confidential sources (a 10-year-old boy tutored by one of our staff) tell us that ‘4-1’ is the new ‘6-7’. Watch this space…
To get in touch with us about an order, please email support@the-fence.com. For the latest tricks and tips, get in touch at editorial@the-fence.com. Ketchup was once sold as medicine.
All the best,
TF