Dear Readers,
Good morning, and welcome to Off The Fence, a newsletter that’s going to be packed out every week – and sometimes twice a week – from now until the end of two thousand and twenty three. We’re just finishing Issue 18 this week, so it’s ready for an early December delivery: it’s looking like the best issue yet, and by some distance too. (Though to paraphrase Mandy Rice-Davies, we would say that, wouldn’t we?)
There are now 11,500 of you signed up to this weekly newsletter, which is really fantastic news – if you enjoy this newsletter, then why not take up a subscription to the magazine?
It really is cracking value. Or you can pick up Issue 17 or one of the back issues from the shop here. And a quick reminder: if you’d like to speak to us about an order, you can do so by emailing subscriptions@the-fence.com.
To business. On the docket this week, we’ve got shifty squaddies, some YBA pick-up tactics, but first, a little bit on the omnipresent octogenarians dominating the cultural landscape.
Having a Senior Moment
Martin Scorsese has made what many consider his best film in years at the firm old age of 80, while Ridley Scott preps Napoleon at the age of 85. Mick Jagger (80) has being doing press (in French) for the first Rolling Stones record since 2005. At 88, Maggie Smith has been unveiled as the face of Loewe and Paul McCartney (81) and Ringo Starr (83) have unveiled the first new Beatles song since 1995, albeit accompanied by a video featuring the single most embarrassing bit of CGI cut and paste we’ve seen this side of a Tim Heidecker sketch.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Opxhh9Oh3rg
Rendering all of the above positively wet behind the ears, the BBC’s tentpole hit this month has been Planet Earth 3, helmed by the hopefully immortal David Attenborough, now 97 years old.
So, what’s going on? It would be nice to think that a growing appreciation for ‘age diversity’ is at play here, not least when considered against previous mis-steps in discarding venerable talents in favour of youth. In Britain, the hurtling plunge toward youth-addicted media probably reached its zenith in the Cameron years, when BBC bods were publicly criticised for – and, in the case of Countryfile journalist Miriam O’Reilly, lost a 2011 employment tribunal regarding – their policy of youthing up the airwaves and pivoting toward younger, less experienced presenters. This was, as ever, in response to falling audiences among the young, a decline which has never since abated. A Catch-22 emerges: the only people left consuming legacy media as their prime source of information are the very people incensed by having to watch too many young people, while their own contemporaries are treated like dead wood to be cleared.
It's more likely, however, that the unrailed sluice that is popular media makes it almost impossibly hard for anyone, of any age, to attain the kind of brand recognition that was possible in the pre-digital age. Paradoxically, we may just be seeing the last swan song of the legacy slebs who built up their immortal sheen of fame, fame that is now impossible for anyone below the stadium straddling mega-tier of Taylor Swift and Beyoncé.
Put another way, it’s hard to think who the equivalent Elder Gods will be in twenty years. We just hope Attenborough is still among them.
The Show Must Go On
Those of you who read Bron Maher’s dispatch from The Fuck Tree would have thought that we would have no more Hampstead stories to give. But you would have thought wrong. We’ve spent two years trying to run this piece, and we’re absolutely delighted that we managed to get Isobel Thompson to report this story, and to uncover the hidden history of the Travelling Showmen of the Vale of Health.
For if you walk down off East Heath Road, you’ll find a cul de sac of Victorian cottages and modernist homes that sell for many millions – and at the end of the road, a caravan park, surrounded by the oaks and the birches of London’s most beautiful park.
The story of how this park came to be – and the family who lived here for over a century – is available to read here. It’s one of the best pieces we’ve ever published.
Grow Your Own
With the COVID inquiry dominating the headlines, it’s the right time to revisit Jack Beaumont’s narco-tinged dispatch from the British countryside. Back in 2020, the then Prince Charles helped launch ‘Pick for Britain’, a campaign to gather a food army of 40,000 workers to help with the harvest during the pandemic.
As Jack reports, the campaign was a disaster, laced with drug-addled workers and exploited by farmers behaving like mafia dons in the shires of England. Three years later, it’s still a knock-out piece of journalism.
Loading The Flatplan
If you want to hear our editor orate about the current state of the British mediascape, then you should come to MagCulture Live, where Charlie and a number of other more magazine heads will be talking about all things print in the immaculately tasteful Vitsoe showroom. We look forward to seeing some of you there.
Our Friends In Hereford
Regarding delayed justice and shilly-shallying committees, it’s now 12 years since a Special Air Service squadron killed 54 people in suspicious circumstances during a six-month tour of Afghanistan. There are talks of an inquiry happening, and whispers of cover-ups at the highest levels of government.
We managed to convince an insider who had served in the UK military to write about why the SAS are allowed to act with such deadly impunity. Stand by for some jaw-dropping anecdotes from Basra and Helmand.
The Governess Confesses
While there have been very few (any?) anonymous dispatches from the vantablack world of the British special forces, there have been quite a lot – some might say a surfeit – of first-hand accounts from Brits tutoring for the world’s super-rich.
Well, our own entry into the butlering canon is by far the funniest, that much we can assure you. And there’s quite a lot of sex in this piece, too.
A Rare First Edition
Bit of top-tier gossip for you all here. Who’s the celebrated YBA-er (now in respectable middle age) who rocks up to first dates with a signed copy of their book? Answers on a postcard, please.
Rarer Gifts Still
If you’ve enjoyed these pieces, maybe you’ll go a little further: a subscription to The Fence is only £24.99, for twelve glorious months of primo print. It remains the very, very, very best magazine that your hard-earned money can buy – the UK’s only magazine, if you will.
Too Much Hype
We are really struggling with all these new restaurants in our corner of Soho at the moment. On Peter Street, opposite the Supreme store, where people queue for two hours to buy a t-shirt, is a new burger joint called Supernova, where people are queuing 45 minutes to buy a cheeseburger. We went to film the queue for today’s mail-out, but were greeted by the sight of James Corden, who was wearing sunglasses and bewailing Supernova’s opening hours. ‘It must be shut on a Monday,’ he moped.
Supernova is run by some irritating French private equity-ish dudes who take the British public to be mugs – which, by the sweep of Carhartt beanieboys crawling around the corner every day, we must be. Our free lunch editor, Ed Cumming, was there last Friday at 9.30, when the manager barred two men who had come in a taxi from east London to try their burgers because they were ‘late’. Honestly, if you want to really have a burger in Soho, just go to Blacklock on Great Windmill Street. They’ll even let you sit down!
In Case You Missed It
John Lanchester takes his exquisite scythe to two flavours of Crypto Mania for the LRB.
This looks like the most delicious autumn weekend dish, courtesy of Orphée You.
Amanda Chicago Lewis identifies the people who ruined the internet, for The Verge
Edward Helmore on the strange, fraught case of Robert de Niro’s personal assistant, and what it might mean for an unregulated industry caught in a toxic mire.
Ed Zitron runs down all that’s gone on with the Winklevoss Twins’ new billion dollar fraud.
And, for the tenth year running, it’s Jimi Halloween; the glorious Japanese festival of costumes so boring they need to be explained.
And Finally
Exciting news as the BBC’s classic documentary series about the traditions of the officer class in the British Army makes it to YouTube. It’s a jaw-dropping piece of sociology that would never be made now – no institution would ever be so stupid as to grant access on this scale. Did people really speak like that in 1989? Apparently they did! Listen to the coiffured lieutenants warbling on about ‘numbered houses’ here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mfotB0H6D3s
We do truly enter the world of the absurd, though, with a visit to the Goat Major. We will say nothing more on the subject – it truly has to be seen to be believed:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LSG8d_e7A9g
And that is that. Newsletter, sorted. Appetites, sated. As ever, if you’ve got anything at all to send us – questions, queries, tips, tricks and tales – editorial@the-fence.com is the place for you. Catch you next week.
All the best,
TF