Dear Readers,
Good afternoon, and welcome to Off The Fence, an autumnal newsletter from The Fence Magazine. We are joining you on a Wednesday as the Substack account was, alas, full of bugs. All has now been resolved. Here we are. Our editor did not have a relaxing evening last night. But here we are.
Issue 21 has been printed, and soon we will be sending it off into the world to fend for itself. We think it is our best issue. That, as longtime readers will know, is something we rarely ever say. It really is the best one yet, though.
If you haven’t become a subscriber, there is still time to do before 21 drops on doorsteps. Our summer sale is over, but if you subscribe today or tomorrow, you’ll receive Issue 20 (now sold out) and Issue 19 in digital form, for free. That’s six magazines for the price of four, because we’re generous sorts and we don’t want you to miss out.
Some exciting news: in our next installment we have pieces by little-known novelist John Banville, who has returned to our pages. It is a real thrill for us all.
Until then, we’re tiding ourselves over with sinister assassins, tales from Lady Starmer’s wardrobe, and the best thing on Twitter since Moo Deng dropped. But first, let’s talk money.
What’s the Matter with Gazza?
You can make a lot of money in media these days, whatever the naysayers say. Just ask Gary Stevenson, the ex-Citibank employee who claims to have been ‘the best fucking trader in the world’.
After a 12-publisher auction, Allen Lane triumphed, and this year, Stevenson’s memoir The Trading Game has been published to rapturous critical applause – and consistently strong sales.
Within the book, Stevenson relays his rise from a cramped two-bedroom terrace in east London to the trading floors of Canary Wharf, where he became, in his telling, ‘the most profitable trader in the world’. He then quit, at the age of 27, with millions banked. These days, Stevenson runs a YouTube channel titled Gary’s Economics, which has over 450,000 followers, and where he rails against the iniquities of modern capitalism, anglicising the arguments put forward convincingly by Thomas Piketty over a decade ago. It’s a compelling narrative, for sure.
But is it all true? Robert Smith of the Financial Times has spoken at great length to many of Stevenson’s former colleagues, who go on the record to say that Stevenson wasn’t even the best-performing trader on his own team, let alone the bank.
One of them, Kent Bray, an Australian ex-professional rugby player who became addicted to cocaine, has taken to LinkedIn to refute the narrative, stating ‘Never let the truth get in the way of a good story’. Bray, along with many others, is easily identifiable within The Trading Game, and still seems fond of Stevenson, in a loosely paternal kind of way.
Our intrigue into this story was piqued by a number of City journalists who have told us that they have been ‘waiting for this story’. And speaking to people in the wider mediasphere and political arena, it seems Stevenson is not short of bravura – and that’s putting it mildly. According to two sources, Stevenson intimated that he received a seven-figure advance for his book, and that it was the biggest advance that Penguin have ever paid out.
This is not entirely true. We are told by multiple sources that Stevenson received a £300,000 advance, which while not seven figures, is an enormous sum for a first-time writer. It’s a massive outlay, yes, but it’s not the biggest advance that Penguin have ever dropped.
But such an investment would suggest, at least to the casual observer, that there might have been a more extensive fact-checking process. The type of arduous googling and emailing which is standard in print media. The question stands: why weren’t Stevenson’s colleagues contacted?
You might expect more from the team involved. Stevenson’s UK editor, Thomas Penn, is also a medieval historian – so should be no stranger to a reference – and is famous in the publishing world for ‘discovering’ Owen Jones.
Over in the States, his American editor, Paul Whitlatch questions the value of journalistic reporting, if it gets in the way of ‘a narrative in a grand way.’
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o1IGDrBnVqU
Words for us all to live by, perhaps. But as the video above suggests, the majordomos of the publishing world regard should, we reckon, pay a little more attention to those boring little details.
Hitting the Bars
Contrary to popular belief, Los Angelenos did not invent open-air exercising for the benefit of horny, jealous onlookers. And yet it’s Muscle Beach we think of first when we consider the odd practice. Grace Linden makes the case that it should actually be London Fields instead, a less sandier but no less aesthetically pleasing closer-to-home Mecca for the muscled. Read her report from Hackney’s sun-dappled bars and the stories of the men who hang off them right here.
Routhless Ryan
Before he took a shot at Trump, would-be assassin and golf enthusiast Ryan Wesley Routh was a prolific tweeter. His account has been suspended now, which is a shame, but at TF towers we have gone deep to find his gems of wisdom before they are wiped from the information superhighway entirely. Before he turned his sights on Trump he had a different target: Bruno Mars. He appealed: ‘Bruno Mars could you please help me produce a song for Ukraine? We must keep the war front of mind. I have some music and lyrics ideas. I am in kaaawa [a village in Oahu, Hawaii]. I was in Ukraine five months and headed back.’ Followed by his email and phone number. He also wanted to buy a rocket from Elon Musk, to end Putin’s evil regime by firing it at his ‘Black Sea mansion bunker’.
Who could have realised he was insane! Follow The Fence here – we rarely if ever post things which are insane or violent, and none of us like golf.
This Sceptred Isle
We could write a long article about this, and we’re sure that some bore probably will, but it was astonishing to see the extreme Englishness of Posy Simmonds celebrated with a major retrospective at the Centre Pompidou earlier this year.
Simmonds, who is now 79 years old, has pushed the form of the graphic novel into uncharted waters with Tamara Drewe and Cassandra Darke. She is inarguably a genius.
Ralph Steadman is famous for his collaborations with Hunter S Thompson, but continues to work from his studio in Kent at the age of 88 years old, and is currently the subject of a touring exhibition across the United States.
It’s pretty depressing to see Britain fail to celebrate two of its leading artists as they reach the end of their lives. There are more than a few well-funded museums here. We are sure there will be some more Quintin Blake Royal Mail stamps for Christmas, though – that’s something to look forward to.
The Most Handsome Man In British Media
Perhaps we are too obsequious to Matthew Whitehouse, the man who edits The Face. But in our defence he is really very nice and cool, and he just put Chappell Roan on the cover of his magazine. He also claims to read The Fence almost as much as he reads The Beano. There is hardly a better endorsement than this. Read the rest of his wisdom in an interview with our editor Charlie Baker here.
A slay from Lady Vic?
Is it ethical for a sugar daddy to pay for your wife’s wardrobe, if you are already earning £8,251.03 per month? No, obviously not. Is it chicto have your husband’s sugar daddy pay for your wardrobe, even though he is employed as the Prime Minister of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and could presumably buy you a pair of shoes himself every now and then? Arguably, yes. It could be.
It depends on the pieces you are receiving from said sartorial donors. In the case of Lady Victoria Starmer, your resulting #gifted London Fashion Week wardrobe may contain gems such as: green floral maxi dresses (ME+EM, £325 full price), white prom dresses with beaded capes attached (Needle and Thread, £725), Gok Wan style belted cap sleeved (????) midi dresses (Edeline Lee, £1,200) and a seemingly endless array of Karen Millen numbers. Which, we’re sure everyone can agree, is all very very cool indeed.
In Case You Missed It
Róisín Lanigan takes us on a trip through the beauty and the business of the Rose of Tralee.
Intra-magazine warfare klaxon! Nathan J Robinson says The Atlantic is ‘the worst magazine in America’.
Clare Considine documents a week in the life of a young asylum seeker in a beautiful piece.
Parker Yesko on the US war crimes buried in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Someone’s put every single track from Now That’s What I Call Music 1-114 (1983-2004) in one Spotify playlist.
And Finally
Yesterday marked 30 years since the lifting of the broadcasting ban. (Our own Séamas O’Reilly even coaxed Chris Morris out of seclusion to talk about it this past weekend). It was one of the weirdest moments in recent British history, and one which our younger readers may not know even existed.
The TL;DR is that, for six years between 1988 and 1994, it was illegal for representatives of Sinn Féin to speak on the UK airwaves, resulting in the absurd spectacle of their voices being dubbed from English into English on every broadcasting platform in Britain.
There are many videos we could link to demonstrate this strangest and mostly forgotten era of British media policy, from Gerry Adams being dubbed like an incoming Brazilian striker stating his delight to be joining Kevin Keegan-era Newcastle United or the infamous The Day Today sketch which still lasts as the ban’s most enduring cultural legacy. But none of those quite fills the And Finally remit more than this 1990 Panorama documentary, The Enemy Within.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xTmoCkXF5MM
In it, journalist Peter Taylor takes a peek inside the Maze prison, documenting the internal factions and politicking inherent in a massive correctional facility filled with political prisoners. It’s a bracing survey of the British carceral state, with more than a few notes of absurdity therein. Not least in the moment that the strictures of the then-present broadcasting ban become most apparent – when an IRA prisoner has his voice dubbed, despite the fact his sole contribution to the footage is a polite discussion with his jailers about the size and quality of the prison’s sausage rolls.
That’s it for this week. Remember that if you subscribe now you’ll get Issue 19 and Issue 20 for free, which is pretty cool. And if you have any questions for us: email editorial@the-fence.com. There is a very, very big story dropping tomorrow. One to look out for…
All the best,
TF