Dear Readers,
Good afternoon and welcome to Off The Fence, a newsletter entering its seventh year of operational service. It’s been a delight to see how popular the last few outings have been, and we are endeavouring to maintain said fervour. As has always been the case, this mail-out will be free to read, and we have another fantastic outing for you today.
Another five tokens have been printed off that give 15 per cent off a year’s subscription – that’s print, digital or both and also applies to gift subscriptions, so do move with all haste to the link below.
Issue 26 continues to be spotted in all places fashionable: providing wholesome parenting opportunities, in the UNESCO World Heritage city of Bath and, of course, in Soho.
Do keep sending these snaps through to editorial@the-fence.com or post them on social media and you can win a really quite expensive bottle of sparkling wine. Do note that the magazine is being stocked in Waterstones throughout the land – we’ve just received word that it’s now in Cambridge and Nottingham, which really is very exciting for us all.
Issue 27 is being brought to the boil, but in the meantime, let’s discuss the body politic.
Chilli Con Carnsy
There’s a touch of ‘1970s South America’ in the rapturous media reception given to Al Carns, or Al Carns DSO OBE MC MP to give him his full title. The Labour Member for Selly Oak only entered the world of politics in 2024, having spent 23 years in the armed forces. Yet last week an ‘Al Carns for leader’ website was registered, as the Scotsman’s chances of replacing Keir Starmer are talked up by some in SW1 and beyond. Here, he challenges a firefighter to a pull-up competition, and trounces him by 30 to 18.
Carns’ military career is impressive, and it is acknowledged that he served in the Special Boat Service (SBS) as an officer, but full details of that are hard to come by, and press coverage of Carns’ service is somewhat elliptical.
However, we have been told by multiple sources that Carns wasn’t just an officer in the SBS, that he was the commanding officer of the regiment.
Will Carns power his way to Downing Street? It remains to be seen. As one observer puts it, there’s ‘a world of difference between leading a small team of hyper-motivated task-oriented best-of-breed professionals, and trying to herd 400 attention-seeking pathological narcissists.’
Mummy, Can You Help Me?
A wonderful tale has reached our ears: of a currently serving MP who commands their staffers to tie their shoelaces. Do you know more about this story? Are you aware of other imperious parliamentarians? Drop us a line at editorial@the-fence.com.
You Know the Coke Ain’t Diet
We haven’t had the time to tabulate it, but we reckon that Digga D has been mentioned in this mail-out almost as many times as Peter Hitchens. Digga (real name: Rhys Herbert) appeared in Parliament last Wednesday, especially to assist the pressure group Art Not Evidence in their battle to stop drill music lyrics as admissible evidence in trials by jury.
Digga is appearing in court himself this summer, as he faces a proceeds of crime hearing concerning large-scale drug dealing, which he operated, despite being a chart-topping musician, from a detached home in Bracebridge Heath, Lincoln (Digga is from Ladbroke Grove). Truly, one of the most fascinating figures in contemporary British life.
Moors the Pity
Lotte Brundle took her boyfriend to watch ‘Wuthering Heights’, as Emerald Fennell so styles it, on a special screening on Saint Valentine’s Day. And he absolutely loved it.
I had always imagined that the Heathcliff to my Cathy would be a floppy-haired creative from one of the Home Counties. I did not imagine I’d fall for a hairy Scottish economics graduate. Before we went, he’d prepared by reading Jo Ellison’s piece in the Financial Times, so when I asked him what Wuthering Heights was about, he confidently replied: ‘An unhinged love story between Heathcliff and Margot Robbie’s character – but I don’t know what her name is’. Before adding: ‘It’s not by Emily Brontë, is it?’
‘Wuthering Heights’ was being shown a total of seven times at The Ritzy in Brixton on 14 February. When we took our seats, we were surrounded by at least 30 couples and plenty of tipsy ‘galentines’ groups. The girl behind us asks her beau: ‘Have you read Tess of the d’Urbervilles?’. ‘No,’ he replied.’ As the screen warned us of the ‘disturbing images and strong sex’ to come, audible whoops were heard.
Fennell’s choice of opening scene has been talked about so much that the man sitting directly in front of us had decided to film it with his iPhone. In case you’ve been living underneath a rock, ‘Wuthering Heights’ opens with a hanging. The unfortunate deceased has an erection, one which disgusts and titillates an onlooking nun in equal measure. There were gasps and giggles from the audience at the sight. Young Cathy and Heathcliff’s story is then told, to emphasise their childhood bond, before a tightly corseted Robbie bursts onto the moors and, to a cheer, an all-grown-up Jacob Elordi arrives on screen.
For those of you who don’t know the plot and don’t want to see the film, here’s a little précis. Everything goes swimmingly until tragedy strikes and Heathcliff, fearing Cathy doesn’t love him anymore, dramatically abandons her, not to be seen again for five years. In this time, Cathy marries a wealthy and kind man called Edgar and is well-dressed but sexually unfulfilled in their gigantic house, until Heathcliff returns, glowed-up with a haircut and new gold tooth. Then we finally get the sexy compilation we had all been waiting for – which was much less shocking and much more romantic than we’d thought it might be.
The second biggest audience reaction came later when Heathcliff, out of revenge, decides to seduce Edgar’s ward. He climbs through her window, dripping wet and says, pretty much verbatim: ‘I don’t love you. I will treat you abominably, and I am only marrying you to get my revenge. I will not ravish you passionately and brutally if this offends you. Does it?’ To this, she enthusiastically shakes her head, which elicited a round of belly laughs from the crowd. Later, he makes her bark like a dog on all four,s and she loves it – but if I went into that, we’d be here all day. The biggest reaction, however, was at the end, just after Heathcliff had cradled a pale, dead Cathy in his arms. The screen faded to black, and there was rapturous applause and exclamations like: ‘What the heck?’, ‘Bloody hell!’ and ‘That was so sad,’ (although I did spot a few novel purists shaking their heads and refusing to clap).
It was not how we thought the film would be. Many critics had dramatically condemned it as nothing more than an all-out shag-fest. A writer in the New Statesman even described it as ‘porn’. Obviously, it’s not a faithful adaptation of the book, but the film we saw was a funny, tragic and romantic story about a pair of doomed lovers. Yes, there was BDSM. Yes, there was a dead man’s boner. Yes, Elordi was brooding and sexually domineering in the fog, etc., etc., but when the film ended, we weren’t thinking of any of those things; we were thinking about their love story. And, like many in the audience, had both shed a tear at the tragedy of it all.
Let Me Tell You a Secret
From Angharad George-Carey, creator of the hit podcast Daddy Issues, Something I’ve Never Said (S.I.N.S) is an intimate new interview series that dares to go where most conversations end. Each episode invites a high-profile guest to share truths they’ve never said aloud – confessions, contradictions, private fears, moments of devastation and guilty pleasures.
In the first episode, Angharad speaks to actress Anna Chancellor about the death of Anna’s daughter, Poppy, who died in 2023 from acute myeloid leukaemia at the age of 36. In the most recent podcast, Angharad sits down with the legendary Hanif Kureishi and his son Carlo to talk about Hanif’s appalling accident that has left him confined to a wheelchair, and how that has drawn the two of them closer together.
The Rising Sun Salutes the Iron Lady
No one does social media diplomacy like the Japanese. We’ve told you of their wonderful celebrations of Mexican Independence Day, their new Jamaican ambassador who briefly inspired the hashtag #OhayoWagwan and now we bring you the ambassador closest to our doorstep, Mr Hiroshi Suzuki.
There’s lots of stuff to love here, not least his compilation of a year’s work travelling around with a small plushie of Paddington Bear. But his recent work deserves the most attention, because in the span of one day, he posted photos beneath Margaret Thatcher’s towering form in Grantham and draped in green on the terraces of Celtic Park, a phenomenal contradiction that Mr Suzuki lightly brushed off by going for a ‘wee Swally’ and smashing into a pint of Tennant’s.
It puts us in the mind of some of our own travels up and down our own nation, bucking the false narrative that we are but a Soho publication. Just a little over a year ago now, we headed down to Grantham ourselves to see what lay beyond and underneath the Iron Lady’s legacy, and before that, we were off to Liverpool to explore the aftermath of the failed terror attack there on Remembrance Day 2021. More recently, we’ve been up to Glasgow to find a cabbie poet and across to Belfast to find a street preacher. Truly, we are as fond of all the varied aspects of these isles as Mr Suzuki is, and that really is saying something. We’re also looking for more pieces from beyond the M25.
Who is Jim E. Brown?
Last week’s Off The Fence introduced you to the wonderful music of one Jim E. Brown as its send-off. We can and do still recommend his oeuvre to you; it’s really very funny. But we must admit that we, like many others, have been foiled. That Jim E. Brown was a character was obvious – he claims a birthday in 2001 and to be perennially 19 – so we expected artifice. What we did not expect was that Jim E. Brown is the creation of Max Marguiles, an American.
Everything about his accent, image and music felt like such a perfect send up of UK gloom, that if felt impossible to believe the man behind the mask was not from these isles. The facts, however, cannot be denied. A Reddit user on r/jimebrown who claims they were ‘hired’ to find out Jim E’s real identity has noted the occasional inclusion of one Max Marguiles as an additional songwriter. Deeper digging found an old website owned by Max, stating that he is a Philadelphia–based filmmaker and musician. The likeness is irrefutable, and the revelation makes Jim E. Brown’s regular shows there – along with his U.S. podcast appearances – much more intelligible. He can also be found in an 11-year-old video as part of a much less funny musical duo called Shy Boyz.
And yet, this does not dampen our pleasure in the man’s work. On one level, it is frankly staggering that an American has made such an accurate British satirical character. There were some small signs (referring to ‘Prozac’ for example) but these were hardly jarring amid the talk of Greggs, Asda and depression. We are simply forced to hold our hands up to a master. It has also promoted his avid fans to assiduously deny the connection, demanding Reddit mods ban any mention of Max, and insisting he is a distant, and malign, relative, out to get the credit for Jim E’s incredible work.
In Case You Missed It
Robert Duvall has died. Many were great fans of the man and, as it turns out, he was a great fan of Scottish football legend ‘Wee’ Jimmy Johnstone.
Genghis Khan continues to be responsible for violence despite being dead for centuries.
Lord Palmerston bids the world farewell from Bermuda.
And Finally
We have a hell of a local politician to introduce you to: Eric Mays, a former council member from Flint, Michigan. Mays was, shall we say, a complicated figure. He was a long-time unionist, having worked for General Motors, and then represented the NAACP. He won praise for being one of the earliest and most outspoken public voices on the issue of Flint’s water pollution – a genuine scandal which still plagues the city today. He won less praise for his numerous in-session outbursts, which, along with convictions for felonious assault (waving a revolver at a man he claimed tried to rob him several years prior) and driving under the influence, made him one of the most frequently arrested representatives in U.S. history.
More recently, he has won the internet’s heart because, whatever one makes of him, he’s absolutely hilarious. Highlights include walking into council sessions to ‘theme music’, extensive imitation of his many council nemesis and a catchphrase of ‘when they go low, I go lower’. All of this is delivered in Mays’ iconic voice, which always seems to clip the levels on his microphone by a good 1000 db. It was a brash style, but it was one that won him many loyal devotees, especially representing a quarter of Flint that is often heavily overlooked. To be clear, we don’t necessarily commend Mays’, but it’s certainly a welcome change from listening to more verbal aspic from our own PM. There’s a short set of clips here, or you can settle down for a nice cup of tea with the fuller version below.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7yjiMTg7-00
We’ll be back on Thursday with a particularly vicious outing of Capital Letter, which you can sign up for here. Do remember that we have some reduced subscriptions available and please direct all administrative queries to support@the-fence.com. The most popular girls’ name in France today? It’s ‘Louise’. Until the next time.
All the best,
TF