Dear Readers,
Good afternoon and welcome to a special Thursday edition of Off The Fence, a newsletter that has absolutely no interest in the result of the US election. None whatsoever. We’re joining two days later than usual as we’ve been all hands to the pump finishing the Christmas issue. Despite appearances to the contrary, there’s only one of us working full-time.
We are polishing off the finishing touches on Issue 22, though, contrary to what we said earlier, let us express a note of real concern at the new Trump administration’s inaugural policy.
Meanwhile, Issue 21 is still making its way through the big wide world. This week it was spotted in the buzzing neon heart of Shinjuku, inside an incredibly chic handbag, and – recognisably and indisputably – in the Windy City of Chicago. Most excitingly of all, we also got a shout-out from sweets mogul and man off MIC, Jamie Laing, who, we can still testify, is a very good c*nt.
Today, we’ve got some juicy literary gossip, a list of London’s scariest people and a smattering of suitably bitchy thoughts about Labour’s power couples. But first, let’s talk about a chef.
Up The Workers
Hugh Corcoran is an Irish restaurateur who has forced himself into the foodie spotlight in recent weeks – and seems very happy to be there. Opening a restaurant on the bottom bit of the Caledonian Road called The Yellow Bittern, Hugh has a uniquely antique business plan. His place is only open for lunch, Monday-Friday from 12-2; no email reservations will be taken; it is strictly cash-only; there is no prix-fixe, no website, no social media and the opening menu originally charged £9 for a plate of radishes. This lunch settles up ‘between £40-100 a head’.
Hugh’s one concession to modernity is a very active personal Instagram account, which he has used to upbraid his first few customers for failing to ‘justify [their] presence in the room that afternoon’ with their ungrateful skinflintitude. ‘Restaurants are not public benches,’ he writes, ‘you are there to spend some money.’
Insulting paying customers in your first week of trading is not a typically wise business practice, as hundreds of commenters were keen to remind him. But Hugh – and all credit to him here – ploughed on posting into the second day, declaring that ‘any member of the organised working class can afford a meal such as this once a week’.
The reaction to the post is worth reading through, not least this incredulous response from Isaac Lock.
It seems that representatives from the Irish Embassy may have travelled to King’s Cross and got Hugh to put down his iPhone, for he’s been restricting himself to rather more staid promotional material since. Though he’s just given an interview in which he breaks omertà, stating ‘personally, I don’t like Sally Rooney’, so it seems the cultural attachés will need to hop on the Northern line again.
As for the food, one reader described the experience thusly: ‘Warmed-up steak & kidney pie for £40. Would be amazed if it’s still open by Christmas.’
There’s Nowhere Like England When the Sun Shines
Earlier this year, we thought we published the ‘Cleromantical Hexagram of Nicky Haslam’, in which William Clarke conjures 36 categories comprising everything that every version of Nicky Haslam, in every possible universe, could pretend, for financial gain, to think was common. Or so we thought. Il miglior fabbro has returned with his Christmas teatowel, and it’s an entirely dazzling return to form. Primrose Hill, when you think about it, really is rather common. The teatowel is accompanied by a sterling interview in the Times, dripping with juice, not least the revelation that Haslam is still taking cocaine in his mid-eighties (but ‘not after 10pm’).
Our own hexagram, with a wonderful illustration from Natalya Lobanova, was the back spread of Issue 19, and has never been put online, which is a shame as it really is brilliant. There are only a few copies left, we should add.
SW1nging
Have you ever been sitting alone at a dinner party, completely swamped by the company of couples? Irritating, tittering, chattering, chuckling couples, with their dumb little in-jokes and boring anecdotes about whatever stupid bollocks they’ve been getting up to, or saving up for, or doing to each other recently. Anyway, with the appointment of Wes Streeting’s partner, Joe Dancey, to some plush policy role inside the Labour Party, we have to assume that couples just run the whole country now.
Aside from Streeting and Dancey, there’s Morgan McSweeney and his wife Imogen Walker, newly parachuted into a safe seat. There’s McSweeney’s deputy, Marianna McFadden, married to this government’s flagship ghoul, Pat. There’s policy chief Stuart Ingham, married to press chief Jess Leigh. And that’s before you touch the whole Angela Rayner & Sam Tarry situationship. And Jenny Chapman’s storied relationship with… her husband, Nick Smith, of course. It’s not quite the last days of Berlusconi, but if we hear of key-bowls being left by the doors of Whitehall meeting rooms, we’ll let you know.
I Don’t Want to Talk About it
There’s too much veneration of American media at the moment – not least in this mail-out – but we’re slightly quizzical as to the telos of On The Rag, a publication that promises to marry bookish intrigue with horny messageboarding, examples of which include ‘sluttiest British writer’ and this debate as to the identity of the ‘hottest literary critic’ – a bafflingly high number of nominations for Christian Lorentzen lie within, before some sage soul writes ‘Dua Lipa has written a few guest blurbs, so by a technicality... Dua Lipa’. This is of course the correct and only acceptable answer.
Drinking a Piña Colada at Trader Vics
While all of our articles are salacious and spiky and entirely without malice, some of them are just too hot for anything other than print. These articles, you may have noticed, do not appear in digital form on our website. For the real heads, we post them in illustrative form on our Instagram instead.
If you aren't following us there yet – foolish – then you may have missed our list of the 12 scariest people in London. Everyone from Rachel Johnson and Carole Middleton to JW Anderson and Mark Howard KC. Is there anyone we've missed? Please email editorial@the-fence.com and let us know.
Sustained Jubilation
Delayed Gratification were the first publication to understand that people want their news a bit slower in this digital age. More considered, more refined. They produce an outstanding quarterly magazine, and they’ve just released a lovely gift book with Bloomsbury, entitled Misc, a bang up-to-date playful miscellany. If you like the ‘etc’ section of our own publication, then you’ll love this.
The Pipes, the Pipes are Dirty
A salutary tip of the pint glass to our friends at Time Out, who have published a list that is bound to have been uncontentious among their readership: the 50 best pubs in London. From a quick straw poll of the office, we have visited six, 20 and 22 of the chosen pubs respectively. By our measure, a pretty fine selection, although contributor Jimmy Macintosh pointedly declines to mention which pubs give him free outdoor booths in exchange for favourable coverage.
It got us thinking about the other end of the scale, and whether we may service the needs of our readers by pointing out some of the shittest pubs in London – places that could take a bit of a kicking. (We can all agree that this positivity can be a bit cloying.)
Our first shout was The Plimsoll, the gilda-slinging crèche for Carhartt-capped sad lads and exiled young Tories just off Finsbury Park. Another team member had a better suggestion, South Kensington’s dreaded Zetland Arms, less a pub than an entrapment scheme for tired, thirsty tourists and perma-stoned MPW drop-outs. There’s the Rockingham Arms in Elephant & Castle (‘weird and scary’), The Flask in Highgate, a pub that despite being one of the most perfectly complete coaching inns in England somehow manages to be ‘incredibly offensive’, and the saddest of all Wetherspoons operating in the UK, the Kentish Drovers in Peckham (‘satanic’).
Got anywhere worse? Send the bottom of your barrel to editorial@the-fence.com, and we’ll share it with the rest of the class next week.
Dutch Courage
Technically speaking, our Christmas issue is the one about to drop, #22. And yet nonetheless, we couldn’t resist publishing a festive short story in Issue 21. Penned by Lucas Oakeley, ‘Empty Orchestra’ is a tale set in the Palm Tree, a real life pub in the heart of Bow that stands as a ‘Grade-II listed relic on a desolate stretch of street that was reduced to rubble during the Blitz’. Bow residents and those in the know are well-versed in the tales of the Palm Tree live jazz nights. It’s one of these in the heart of party season that Lucas brings to life. If you would like to vicariously experience a poignant night in a very good pub, read it here to tide you over until The Fence Christmas party. Which is also usually a very poignant occasion, but involves less live jazz.
In Case You Missed It
Ed Caesar on how Syria became the drug dealer of the Middle East, in the New Yorker.
Nicholas Harris examines Southport and ‘the rage of England’ for the New Statesman.
Samira Shackle offers a survey of acceleratory remembrance as Britain’s Poppymania kicks back into gear.
While David Marchese’s incredible 2018 Vulture interview with Quincy Jones has rightly earned plaudits, we humbly submit Chris Heath’s similarly bonkers interview with the departed icon for GQ, which was published three weeks earlier.
And Finally
Like many other musical geniuses – David Bowie, George Harrison, Jojo Siwa – Quincy Jones possessed a wicked sense of humour. So much so that the obituarists are celebrating the one-line gags over the deathless tunes, which is understandable if you’re trying to write something in the staid pages of a broadsheet, but not when you can CTRL-V a couple of classics from YouTube right into this here newsletter. Which is exactly what we’re going to do. Let’s kick things off with George Benson:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FIF7wKJb2iU
The have this from the Brothers Johnson to round things off with:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=11hGcmuccwk
We’ll be back with some vantablack comedic miserablism in this slot next week, longtime readers be not afear’d.
That’s it for this week, and we’ll be back in the normal Tuesday slot next week. As ever, if there’s anything you want to message us about, drop us a line at support@the-fence.com and you will be attended to promptly. Enjoy the rest of the week.
All the best,
TF