Dear Readers,
Good afternoon and welcome to Off The Fence, a newsletter that has a real ‘vibe’. We’ve got a packed June lying in front of us, with the shortlist announcement for the Carbuncle Cup (stay tuned) and lots more else besides. We will be telling you all about it, fret not.
If you haven’t signed up for a subscription, then you can do so at the link just below.
Today, we’ve got podcast confirmation of our youthful vim and vigour, smoking hot divorcées in YOUR area and what’s become a bumper festival issue special, right in time for summer.
Let’s get on with it.
The Tuesday Blurber Club
This morning, Marina Hyde and Richard Osman gave us a glowing review on their great podcast The Rest Is Entertainment. In their most recent episode, they described our (admittedly excellent) print offering as ‘terrific’, with ‘really interesting, fun articles’ and ‘such an attitude’ and commended our ‘really great newsletter’.
None of their laurels were more gratefully received than their claim that we are ‘written by young people and edited by young people’. In so doing, they have correctly identified us as the UK’s most youthful - and only - magazine, and caused us to delay our long-mooted office trip to the face-peeling clinic for another year more.
So, before we press send on our next front page splash (working title: HOMEWORK SUX: WHY WON’T TEACHERS NAFF OFF?), we’d like to thank them here for their kindness and discernment. Do check out their excellent podcast here.
Fenton! Fenton! Oh, Jesus Christ
Our friends at the Idler magazine are hosting a summer festival in the glorious surroundings of Fenton House and Gardens in Hampstead, which is probably the loveliest residence in NW3.
Headliners include Zadie Smith, Rowan Williams, Dominic West, Tim Key, Olivia Laing, Rosie Holt, Salena Godden and Nina Stibbe. There will be beekeeping, dancing, philosophy, foraging and agony aunts, too.
This will be a relaxing and enlightening time, and we’re looking forward to the Rowan Williams-Rowan Pelling b2b DJ set in particular.
We hope to see some of you there, too. Tickets for the Idler Festival, which runs from 5–7 July, are on sale now.
What Happened At Forbidden Forest?
In festival news on the other side of the spectrum, Forbidden Forest festival is receiving lots of backlash on Twitter. Videos from the event, which ran from 30 May–2 June at Belvoir Castle in Leicestershire are circulating online.
According to some visitors on social media, two people lost their lives, but Leicestershire police have denied the claims. Distressing footage featuring festival security guards is being shared around at a growing rate.
It's yet to be confirmed by the press what exactly happened, so if you or anyone you know can shine any light on these grim reports, let us know.
Can’t Even Get A Bag In Anymore, Because Of Woke
As Forbidden Forest attests, festies just aren’t what they used to be. Divorced from their roots as bacchanalias of drinking, drugs, sex and music, a new era of festival-going has besieged this green and pleasant land.
Lifestyle weekenders are now more focused on artisan cheese and pet-nats than ketamine and fingering. Clive Martin went deep into the heart of darkness back in Issue 12, when he reported on the creeping Guardianisation of the Great British music festival. Read it here.
Milkshake? Duck!
Any seasoned media-watchers reading this may want to sit down because, and we can’t quite believe it ourselves, Nigel Farage made headlines again today. Thankfully, it wasn’t for the usual reason – a bovine propensity to treat him as the only famous man in England – but because someone socked him with the aforementioned viscous drink while he was out canvassing in Clacton.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ucO-vNrPVs
This is, famously, not the first time round the ol’ malted milk rodeo for Farage, who was pelted with the creamy liquid during a trip to Newcastle in 2019, prompting much tutting from the sensible corners of the UK commentariat, and this report from CBS News, delivered with the breathless alarm of The Day Today’s Barbara Wintergreen.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-36nJqnqqKE
After a McDonalds in Edinburgh was asked to stop selling milkshakes ahead of Farage’s trip to Scotland, the meme-ready mirthmasters at Burger King caused a minor kerfuffle by appearing to proffer themselves as the superior choice for Rightist encreamery.
We can't, and shan’t, comment on the rights and wrongs of pelting the seven-time failed candidate with vigorously frothed lactate, but we would like to put to bed any suggestion that Farage himself enjoys the fuss because it gets him more attention. For one thing, the pictures make it fairly – even euphorically – apparent that he hates it when this happens to him. For another, in a media ecosystem which really could not give him more attention if it tried, such considerations are, surely, moot.
Hot Divorcées In Your Area
Does divorce make you hotter? Kat Rosenfeld investigates in a new essay for the Free Press. We explored the trope of the Chic Young Divorcée in our Coming Of Age Issue, which dropped at the end of last year. ‘The end of a marriage is understood here as profoundly destabilizing, a stumble from which you try and fail to recover until it becomes a wild, pinwheeling fall’, Rosenfield writes of The Fence’s essay from Contributing Editor, Róisín Lanigan, and whether it’s feminist to get rid of t’husband.
Read the full piece, from Issue 18, here.
In Case You Missed It
Erstwhile Fence fiction ed John Phipps turns in a star-studded treasure hunt, on the search for theatreland’s little red Hamlet.
Amelia Tait meets the weirdos paying hundreds of pounds for expired ‘vintage’ chocolates.
The Observer published an excellent photo piece featuring Victorian portrait cards, including ‘The Connoisseur’, a very respectable looking cat from Brighton.
Daniel Trilling with an excoriating must-read on the iniquities of the Troubles Legacy Act.
Bryce Elder works out how much Queen's musical stylings are worth and it's a kind of magic if you're into Queen and/or detailed statistical analysis.
And Finally
We round out this festival-forward issue with a salute to Christmas Day for Centrist Dads: yes, the Glastonbury line-up has just been released. And this year is a real treat for anyone who has ever held up a protest sign reading ‘I am really quite cross about this!’. From Idles headlining the main stage to Keane on the Pyramid, the Eavises (Eavi?) are truly leaning into their reputation as the go-to festie for people who love fairylights on prams, spray-painted military hats and compound swearing.
In fairness, Glastonbury has always been a bit of a People’s Vote mecca. Back in 2016, the Brexit vote unfolded on the weekend of the festival itself, leading many of its attendees to feel really very cross about this indeed. None more so than Damon Albarn, who recently shouted at Coachella crowds for not caring that he is the man who gave the world Parklife.
On the Friday morning, Blur opened on the Pyramid Stage and took the opportunity to lament what had come to pass. Albarn, wearing a black armband, told crowds: ‘I have a very heavy heart today.’
‘To my mind, democracy has failed us, because we were ill-informed’, he said.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zxWkljL47v4
Albarn was partnered in solemnity by the festival itself, which finished out the fateful weekend with a poem. ‘Let's trudge through the mud, and sing out loud our protest songs,’ read the poem, its lumpen meter seemingly generated by a now-sentient Glastonbury hivemind. ‘As the country is divided - in this field we belong, embrace your fellow Glastonberry [sic], as they are feeling just like you’.
‘Goodbye old friend, we'll miss you a lot, our little mate the EU.’
That’s it for this week, if you’ve got a question about an order, then please email support@the-fence.com and we will attend to you promptly. We’ll be back next Tuesday at the same time.
All the best,
TF