Dear Readers,
Good afternoon and welcome to Off The Fence, a newsletter of no little merit. We’ve got two big announcements today to share with you further down the line. There really is a lot going on and it is all very exciting.
Issue 27 continues to be seen in all places fashionable: seeing the Goyas in Madrid, over vast snowy plains in Canada, toting around London in the sun, waiting for the bus in the same capital, alongside some masterpieces at the NG, at the Geldeston Locks May Day Festival and on the Camino de Santiago.
There is an enormous blow-up copy of Issue 27 in Selfridges on Oxford Street. It really does look amazing and it is part of the MagCulture takeover, which you can see here. While the rest of the country sinks into the mire, our nation’s department stores are fiery with both vision and efficiency.
Please do keep the photos coming in on socials and to editorial@the-fence.com, and you can win a sparkling prize. Issue 27 is stocked in WH Smith, Waitrose and Waterstones – all the big hitters – and if you can’t see it in your local outlet, do raise a complaint.
But the most reliable way to get the magazine is, of course, to subscribe, and thank you to everyone who has joined the merry throng lately. There are some incredibly juicy pieces on the way, so we really appreciate everyone pledging their allegiance at this moment in time.
Subscribe to Our Brilliant Magazine
Our London-centred ‘vertical’, Capital Letter, continues to expand. This week, we’re crowning the Most Vulgar Restaurant in London, and also have some fascinating insider information on the production that everyone in theatreland is talking about: Gary Oldman’s direction of Krapp’s Last Tape at the Royal Court. You can sign up here.
On the Vitruvian Tip
We’re delighted to announce that the Carbuncle Cup is returning after our first outing in 2024, and will be running on a biannual basis from here on in. Since we last awarded the prize to the Lime Street redevelopment in Liverpool, a number of terrible buildings have been built – and we need your help identifying them.
Please send all nominations to editorial@the-fence.com, with a couple of lines explaining why the construction offends you – it goes without saying that this can be for reasons beyond mere aesthetics.
A longlist will be raised in early June, at which point our judging panel will choose a winner. The panel comprises:
Cath Slessor, the former editor of the Architectural Review, who is acting as chair.
Phin Harper, sculptor and critic.
Bertie Brandes, screenwriter.
William Pelham, co-founder of The Fence.
Lucy Watson, commissioning editor at the FT.
Lev Bratishenko, who works at the Cosmic House.
We have some few nominations to get you thinking. Cath has gone for Angel Square by AHMM, ‘A dreadful, sterile replacement for David Rock’s swaggering Pomo masterpiece, which, while it too had its detractors, actually made an attempt to turn the corner. In urban terms, it’s a wonderful site, presiding over the junction of City Road and Islington High Street, beckoning people up the hill – a gateway to Islington, in fact – so should have presented an opportunity for something much more than a glum glass box, with horrid ceramic ribbing details which are going to age like milk.’
Phin has opted for the cruise ship-like warehouses erected in Wigan, much to the outrage of local residents, while Lev has chosen Google’s Platform 37, a ‘loveless smear’ from Thomas Heatherwick and friends.
So, your eyes duly insulted, please do send your nominations through to editorial@the-fence.com – the buildings do have to be constructed in the last two years, and in the United Kingdom, mind. We look forward to hearing from you.
The Life of Reilly
Congratulations to TF legend, Séamas O’Reilly, on the publication of his first novel, Prestige Drama. The reviews are coming in and they are, quite unsurprisingly, are glowing. Those who enjoy sinuous prose and incredibly amusing jokes – which we believe to be a great many of you – should buy a copy here.
Bring out the Banns
We are bringing back our personals section for the next issue, so if you’re looking for love or want to meet a like-minded person, do get in touch via the usual channels. Amazingly, there were four separate dates last time we ran this section, and this time out, we want to be invited to the wedding.
Elect Me Not
We hear there was something of an election the other day, but we haven’t read or heard much about it. Unrelatedly, this week’s rock was pleasant and roomy. We enjoyed our stay very much and you can book your stay there via this link.
Emerging, however, we did note a few interesting things. First of all was that remarkable pantheon of characters that local election candidates offer up to the humourist. Lamentably, much focus has come onto finding out which candidates are bastards and all the horrible things they have said over the years. That local politicians are at least 30% bastard is not, in our estimation, new or interesting information. Instead, we were excited by the candidacy of one Topo Wrensniwiro, an actor who has notably appeared as Master Hamir in the Marvel screed Dr. Strange.
Wrensnirwiro is a man of many talents, as his LinkedIn makes clear. These days he spends his time as a maths and ESOL tutor as well as campaigning in local politics. But there is a remarkable depth to the man. He apparently volunteers at a Quaker homeless organisation as well as for something he describes simply as ‘marriage care’. He is also a prolific ‘participant not spectator’ in karate (as a black belt), chess, tennis, table tennis, badminton, marathon running and outdoor swimming, all while ‘embracing Abrahamic religions’ while ‘seeking his own Theology’. He is also a morris dancer. It is truly a shame that such a renaissance man did not fail to secure a seat and join the nearly 1,400 of his new Reform Party brethren.
He would, of course, make a phenomenal addition to Issue 21’s fantasy football team of Britain’s strangest politicians, possibly as a right back. It’s a strong team, perhaps led in star power by the peculiar habits and vanities of the Thatcherites. There’s Norman St John-Stevas’ inimitable decision to correct David Frost’s description of his shirt as ‘purple’, insisting instead that it was ‘crushed cardinal.’
I Am a Meme, a Meme I Am
The latest piece from Issue 27 is now up on the website. Laura Beveridge spoke to three real-life versions of an online trope: Nick, 30 ans.
‘A symbol of a disaffected middle class too well-off to receive welfare but squeezed by rising taxes, it paints a grim picture of a broken social contract.’ But other options are available, and Laura found this out when speaking to the ‘Nick, 30’s’ of Britain. One, who opted for an apprenticeship with the civil service, ‘enjoys yoga and hiking.’ Another works in corporate law, ‘clocks in 12-hour days, eating all three meals at his desk, leaving at 2 or 3am.’ Different strokes…
Sean Dyche Joins Instagram
Recent times have seen some notable new additions to the world of Instagram, probably none better than Fence contributor Werner Hertzog. A new gladiator has entered the fray however is football manager and imagistic hard man Sean Dyche. The current state of play is hopeful, with his opening gambit looking like a misguided solo album, caption ‘A good place to start’.
His new social presence reminded us of a recent trip we made to the pub that is named for him, the former ‘Princess Royal’ in Burnley was re-named ‘The Royal Dyche’ in 2018 after he led the club back to European football. It is a truly bizarre boozer, boasting a raked seating area called Little Longside, designed to ape the Burnley stadium for optimal pub football watching.
Canapés and Chardonnay
The White House Correspondents’ Dinner investigation continues, proving the continued relevance of our reporting on the event’s security risks. A few years ago, Joe Fattorini followed a friend into the White House Correspondents’ Dinner to understand the inner workings of the worst dinner in America.
Slipping past two US Secret Service agents with self-conscious modesty and deference, they encountered Pamela Anderson, a man wearing cowboy boots with a tuxedo, a general, Salman Rushdie, Larry King and the cast of The Hills. Following a successful dinner with a varied crowd, Fattorini dishes out some advice for anyone who wants another crack at The Don: ‘The Secret Service are suckers for a pair of patent-leather, barathea silk-trimmed, Jermyn Street shoes.’
Ejected from the System
Two Sudanese asylum seekers are currently challenging Shabana Mahmood’s changes to Britain’s right-to-remain rules. We previously covered the collapsing system that asylum seekers are ferried through in the UK in Issue 23, written by an anonymous clinical lead working in an asylum hotel in the north of England.
Our insider laid out the chain of bureaucracy that an asylum seeker must navigate in order to gain the right to remain. But the difficulty, it turns out, arrives when you become a citizen. ‘The real kicker for anyone in the asylum system is what happens at the end. Our government might grudgingly accept your asylum claim’, but when they do, ‘you don’t get a letter congratulating you. You get a letter saying you have 28 days to vacate the accommodation’ and ‘you finally realise: after the right to remain comes the hard part, the one that nobody had really told you about.’
In Case You Missed It
The inside of a Woody-Allen-themed AirBnB.
The Frenchman who invented a philology prize and awarded it to himself.
The assistants running the Met Gala.
Nearly four years after the incident, a court ruling has given us easily the best headline of the week.
Some medieval updates to your lexicon.
Aardman’s happy birthday to David Attenborough.
Britain’s most prolific TikTok alcoholic.
And Finally
Recent months have seen a return of a legend to the platform that dominates this section of the newsletter, a legend we realise you may not even know about, or perhaps came across once, and promptly forgot all about. YouTube is once again a platform for the banalist man covering the bizarre: Tom Scott.
For the uninitiated, Scott is one of the oldest going consistent YouTubers there was, and his series called ‘Things You Might Not Know’ was the kind of thing the platform was really made for. One man goes out to locations around the world to find and talk about strange and unusual things. There’s the man who built an office in a lift, or a float-through McDonalds or indeed the unbelievably unassuming but highly dangerous stretch of water in Yorkshire called The Strid. He has his fair share of historical curios too, with tales of unexploded ordinance and microcosms of the Cold War.
For those of us with curated algorithms, he was something of a stable constant. Then, two years ago, after ten years of publishing a video every week on location he stopped, leaving behind a wealth of material and a series of excellent memes from his extensive travelling to odd places (have a look at this classic, and these well-edited masterpieces). But now, he’s back. Making a new series where he has travelled to every county in England and filmed an interesting story in each one. For those who love a nerdy watch or need a new thing to fall asleep to, we cannot recommend it highly enough. He’s already broken a 142-year-old bell and just recently got in a really very small boat.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cMYYcddinkE
He does have one great sin, which is making a video praising Stuart Semple’s pink, though that does give us another reason to remind you how good Phin Jennings’ piece in Issue 27 is, so perhaps it’s a benefit after all.
Well, there it is. We do hope you enjoyed this week’s brabble offered up by us Scurras and Ultracrepiderians and that this snoutfair missive has awoken you from your zwogger. And if you’re confused by the previous sentence, we now know you don’t peruse the links section properly and can confidently pronounce you a cumberwold, a mumpsimus and a snollygoster who would probably groak at their own grandmother during her final meal on this godforsaken planet. Complaints as to this insult should be sent in to editorial@the-fence.com, and if you wish to receive a brick through your window in response, but have recently changed your address, do reach out to support@the-fence.com. The on-screen brain matter at the end of Blue Velvet is not fake as David Lynch insisted on real human brain.
All the best,
TF