Dear Readers,
Hello again, and welcome back to Off the Fence, the newsletter your inbox has been crying out for since this time last week. We are motoring on, as ever, with Issue 18, and we have Issue 17 arriving in a couple of weeks. There are going to be lots of exciting pieces landing very soon.
But first for something very important. The price of paper has been going through the roof recently – the invasion of Ukraine, rising energy costs and the weak pound have meant that if you make your magazine on the quality matte stuff like we do, then things have got tricky. Our printers in Estonia are finding it harder to source the paper we want on a quarterly basis, so have offered us a chance to buy in bulk.
We are hoping to raise enough capital to buy six issues’ worth of the good stuff, and then we’re all set till 2025. A little cash injection is required – which is why we’ve made an appeal to try and score 100 new subscribers by the end of next week. Now, there are two options before you. This newsletter now has well over 6,000 of you regularly reading it who are yet to sign up. If you’re among this number, then you can redress this issue promptly at this link to our shop page right here.
If you’re one of our existing subscribers, then please do share this appeal on Twitter here. We’ve already had a few ringing endorsements in the last couple of hours and they do make all the difference. Please do keep them coming in.
What this all means is that we can keep our prices in the freezer for a few years to come, as everything else becomes more unreasonably expensive. The Fence has only grown to its current heights (Zone 4 semi-detached, though with an aspiration to be a Norman Foster skyscraper) thanks to the generous assistance lavished on it by its fans. Let’s do this together.
To business. We’ve got quite a few bits on a certain comedian, but we will end on a cheery note, that much we can promise.
Brand Management
The multi-platform investigation into Russell Brand’s alleged crimes has been years in the making, and we will imagine dominate headlines for weeks to come. He is one of the most infamous figures of 21st century Britain. Two years ago, we published an article by Henry Jeffreys, who worked as his publicist in 2007 – it’s a piece that outlines Brand’s deep unpleasantness, and it holds up well in light of the grim stories that have emerged about his conduct, and is very much worth your time.
The Culture Wars Continue
Before Brand became an alt-right conspiracy theorist, he was beloved by television commissioners and Hollywood directors, and then he was, for a brief two years or so, the lodestar of the left, the establishment’s favourite anti-establishmentarian, and an omnipresent figure at Broadcasting House. There will be much sniping among journalists about his Fleet Street enablers – in fact, it’s already begun.
The Long Britpop Years
More interesting, by far, is the discourse surrounding the decade that was the noughties, and how much a melange of laddish irony, tabloid supremacy and reality television encouraged Brand’s behaviour.
This has been accompanied by a number of somewhat tendentious claims from elderly millennials about the supposed ‘horrors’ of the noughties. It’s one to puzzle over. What could be worse? Coming of age from 2001-2008, when Britain buzzed with a growing economy, student debt was manageable and the climate apocalypse was a fringe belief – or, being a young person in the last three years, which you have largely spent in your bedroom, worrying about when the world is going to end?
But then, you do watch videos like this one and think again. It’s astonishing to say that we are going to have issue a trigger warning to a YouTube video from the Big Fat Quiz of the Year, but here we are:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kW8Z1whPtuk
A Dog’s Dinner
A fascinating longish piece from Cathy Horyn, who makes the case that the fashion industry, after a century of supporting mercurial talent, is abandoning design talent, and instead installing people from other industries as figureheads – such as Pharrell Williams, the ageless hip hop impresario who is now men’s creative director at Louis Vuitton, one of the plummest jobs on the circuit.
Some might say that the problem is not that the industry isn’t supporting young designers, but taking more of a critical eye to suboptimal work. It is interesting – is it not? – that fashion is the sole creative industry in which the journalists working with it can still become more famous than the creatives themselves.
As to broader problems within the velvet coffin, Clive Martin’s deep dive into the London fashion world makes for invigorating, vital reading.
Aisle B, Back
Thank you to Philip Anderson, the Precentor of Liverpool Cathedral, who has praised our credentials as ‘a chronicle of contemporary Liverpudlian lives’, thanks to Davey Brett’s cacklingly funny short on his time as a security guard in a Scouse supermarket, which is available to read here. If you haven’t already had the pleasure, do take the time to read Josh Mcloughlin’s survey of Scouseness from Issue 15, a wonderfully dry piece of writing about The Fence’s second city.
Φοβοῦ τοὺς Δαναοὺς καὶ δῶρα φέροντας
For those of you with an impish godchild or diffident uncle with whom you might like to curry favour, we have a cute little option for you. You can gift a subscription to friend, family or foe at this link here – there are hundreds of you who have already done so, and while we are biased, we will say that it does make for a particularly choice gift, whatever the season.
In Case You Missed It
Taylor Lorenz profiles Julia Allison, the woman who invented influencing, and was vilified for it.
Apple just bought an obscure classical music label in Sweden – Ted Gioia gives a depressing explanation as to why.
Kara Kennedy profiles Lord Goldsmith, the man who has only failed upwards.
Court defeat for folk hero of the week: Danish artist Jens Haaning, who sold a gallery empty frames, claiming ‘breach of contract is part of the work’.
What was that we were saying about brutal literary putdowns? Samuel Clowes Huneke euthanises Susan Neiman’s latest anti-woke screed.
What’s it like to have your book banned? Eight authors tell us all.
Friend of TF, Francisco Garcia, meets Nick Pope, who investigated UFOs for the Ministry of Defence.
And Finally
We thought about listing all the great things about the noughties, but that did seem a little OTT, and not the sort of thing you come here for. One very good thing about the early aughts was Roots Manuva’s Witness The Fitness – very possibly the greatest hip hop track to emerge from these shores. If it came out today, it would be number one for the whole summer straight. As it is, it’s been too much of a niche banger. But to celebrate 30 years in the game, Roots has remastered his track, which he has set to the original video, in which he returns to Woodmansterne Primary School to take part in sports day.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jXR_C6FDJag
That’s it for this week. We’ll be back again next Tuesday – we’ve had seven new subscriptions in the door in the last two hours, so we are well on our way. Please do share the appeal, and please, do help us reach the target.
All the best,
TF