Dear Readers,
Good afternoon, and welcome to Off The Fence, it’s our first newsletter of the year. A miserable, sullen day in Soho, and we’re here to provide some small cheer.
Issue 22 continues to be seen in exotic locales: at Grantham station; on a ballooning trip in the desert; enjoying some train beers with a small child; admiring the prospect at Sydney Harbour Bridge and here at Waterstones Piccadilly. Now, Issue 22 is on sale at a number of Waterstones throughout the country, but we have not been told which ones, which is slightly maddening. So do have a look if you’re passing through your local ‘Stones.
Remember, there’s a very generous prize to be claimed for the winningest snap of the magazine ‘in the wild’, all you have to do is send through a photo on social media or to editorial@the-fence.com if you’re feeling nervous.
The very beautiful Issue 22 is available to buy at the very beautiful image below. Just click on it.
Many of you continue to subscribe, which really is wonderful news.
To business, today we’ve got a wonderful documentary from the archive and some words about a new knight of the realm. But first, let’s talk about family matters.
Spiv Doctor
Few public figures generate warmer feelings on the mention of their name than former government heavy turned mental health podcaster, Alastair Campbell. Indeed, the power of his performance, the weight of his rhetoric, drew 15,000 politically homeless punters to the O2 Arena last October for an evening of balls-to-the-wall common sense, netting Campbell and his conversation partner, sickly spy Rory Stewart, hundreds of thousands in cash. Both acknowledge being far richer as podcasters than in their political pomp.
So where is Campbell’s cash ending up these days? As Tom Witherow reports in The Times, nearly half a million of it has gone to covering ‘personal and professional costs’ for his son Rory’s floundering gambling syndicate, which has left investors £5 million out of pocket. Father Campbell has even been helping Rory draft rebukes to his furious funders, but it seems like his spivvy, poker-playing son is bound to have his books checked by the Serious Fraud Office.
As parental interventions go, it’s not quite as bad as those excruciating TikTok collabs with his daughter, but it’s not far off. But we’ve heard there’s a lot more to this story, notably around the Campbells’ ties to former Lord Chancellor, Baron Falconer, whose newly elected son Hamish is already on the fast-track scheme to Cabinet. This is a story that should be reported more widely soon – but it will be fascinating to see which publications hold out to the last…
Playing Daft Punk to the Rock Kids
Touring musicians live fantastically weird lives; monkey’s paw existences as international nomads, hopping into the hearts of scenes and subcultures, then cheap hotels and departure lounges, night after night after night after night – a life that’s as hard to leave as it is to adapt to. What happens when life, love and parenthood take you off the road?
We asked the DJ and producer, Drew Lustman, who has played all over the world as Falty DL, to examine his post-party state as a new father, and the result is one of the sweetest pieces we’ve ever printed. If you’ve ever wondered – or ever experienced – what it’s like to lose your edge and find it again in the middle of a playground, you will want to read Drew’s piece.
It also gives occasion to link to an old favourite, that features legendary German DJ (and father of two), Sven Vath.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q_Q8qVpvgH0
S(t)ir Fry
We offer congratulations to the soon-to-be Sir Stephen Fry on his knighthood. Fry, in the twee register that now holds almost all prose in British English in its appalling clasp, described his final embrace into the warm and sweaty bosom of the Establishment as simultaneously ‘charming’ and ‘enchanting’. The question arises: what finally caused the deep state to sit up and listen to one of the several petitions (from 2011 onwards) demanding that Fry be given the honour?
Ostensibly it is for his ‘services to mental health’, which as one contributor pointed out, basically means ‘rich person who went mad’. Surely there were other reasons other than Fry telling a podcast he was bipolar?
Was it for his intellect? Well, we have already pointed out that Fry has played the part of Steinbeck’s Lennie to written English, crushing its contemporary usage in his supposedly cuddly hands. Elsewhere it has been pointed out that Fry is ‘a stupid person’s idea of an intelligent person’, a judgment that may have been borne out when he recently sat down to decry wokeism with the insight-averse offence wranglers at the Triggernometry podcast.
Was it for his contribution to sport? Fry is president of the Marylebone Cricket Club. However, his tenure has not been without controversy: from ‘jokes’ about Muslims being terrorists and women going off ‘shagging’ at dinners in the Long Room to public displays of his constant friction with the people who are employed there.
Was it for his services to acting? Probably not: Fry has contrived to simply play himself in every production he has ever been in. According to people in TV, one of the reasons his Jeeves and Wooster collaboration with Hugh Laurie ended was because in latter series, Fry consistently insisted on breaking the fourth wall with glances to the camera and adlibbed lines.
What then? Well, given Sandi Toksvig’s general demeanour towards people she views as inferior and in light of some of the stories we hear of her behaviour on the QI set, perhaps Fry has finally been awarded his coveted gong for not being Sandi Toksvig.
Five Star Generals
Not sure if we’ve mentioned this before, but we’re only a little outlet at the end of the day – only four issues, only five staff, only 64 pages (but all of them sensational). As a result, to keep our ‘all killer, no filler’ policy intact in 2025, every feature we commission has to be a certified cast-iron slammer. Do you have one in you? We have a slot still open in Issue 23 if you do.
We polished up our pitch guide at the end of last year, which should give you a steer, but beyond all else, the message is this: we want five star features, print-stoppers, marmalade-droppers, bangers. Send your brightest and best to editorial@the-fence.com and let’s get going on something.
Cold Out, Isn’t It
January, I think we can all agree, is inevitable. You can use it for whatever you want – risible efforts at sobriety or fitness, limp attempts to curb screen time – but most just grin and bear it. Not Josh Mcloughlin, whose sparkling Apology for January is as evergreen as the Douglas Firs currently rotting to decrepitude on the corner of every public park in London. Eschew the talk around Blue Monday (not real, invented by Sky in 2005) and read Josh’s tribute to the most unloved month right here.
To Play Cilla
To our great shame, one thing we have never managed to do is marry two of our readers off with each other. For the past five years, we have been trying to rectify this oversight by privately bankrolling Soho House memberships for our scruffiest, loneliest readers, coaching them through small-talk topics as they struggled to find companionship. Thousands of wasted pounds later, and we’re changing our approach: we’re running personal ads instead.
From the feedback we received in surveys last year, many of you reported having wild, animalistic fantasies about your fellow Fence readers, so it felt as good a time as any to open up the inbox – editorial@the-fence.com – and invite you all to get coupling up. Send us your ad and we’ll print it in Issue 23, and we promise that if you eventually marry the person you meet, The Fence will be there. We will be there.
In Case You Missed It
ProPublica’s Joshua Kaplan with this week’s buzziest deep dive; on John Williams, the mole who Infiltrated America’s far-right Militias without telling the FBI or his family.
Will Tavlin pens an excoriating essay on why Netflix looks like that for n+1.
Conservation.org’s Mary Kate McCoy on a recent expedition in the Peruvian Amazon, which resulted in the discovery of dozens of new animal species
Thomas Meaney on a year in German culture. A decent read.
Katy Waldman carves off some prime lit-world beef, with the tale of the romantasy author accused of stealing her plots from other writers.
And Finally
Every so often, you encounter a documentary deep in the archive that could stretch to many episodes, but is rather compressed down to a brief 30 minutes or so, and is all the richer for it.
And so it is with this magnificent 1978 short from Peter France, entitled Where Have All The Flowers Gone, where he interviews the leaders of the hippy movement 11 years after the first Summer Of Love. Have some of them stopped ‘sticking it to the man’? Yes, they have.
But the interviewees give warm, wistful and occasionally provocative answers, and the whole thing is carried off with a true generosity of spirit. Featuring appearances from Vashti Bunyan, Dr Timothy Leary and Felix Dennis (pre-crack cocaine).
You can, and you must, watch the whole thing here on iPlayer. We would also love to know if any of you ever met any of the people in the programme. Do let us know.
That’s it for this week, we’ll be back again next Tuesday. Pitches go to editorial@the-fence.com and all over emails to support@the-fence.com. Wrap up warm? Shall we sign off with that? Wrap up warm.
All the best,
TF