Off The Fence: Lock-in at the Groucho

And we remember John Prescott

Dear Readers,

Good afternoon, we are with you again. There is a ravenous appetite for newsletters and we are here to sate it. 

Issue 22 lands in ten days, and we will tell you all about it in due course. In the meantime, Issue 21 is only on sale for a little while longer, and only a few copies are remaining on our webstore. 

It’s the last chance saloon to buy Issue 21. It’s sold out at most of our stockists, but there are mags left at Form in Hull; magCulture in Farringdon; the wonderful Pics n’ Ink and Village Books in Leeds. All of the copies left at shops will be thrown in the bin when Issue 22 arrives, which is a shame, but that’s just the way the world works. Sale or return; sale or return. 

The best way to make sure you never miss a copy is to subscribe to the magazine – lots of people are doing this and so should so you.

Let’s get it going. Today we’ve got a wonderful buffet of links, tips and codes, but we start with some words from our editor-at-large, Fergus Butler-Gallie, who remembers meeting the late John Prescott.

Off to a Better Plaice

My own experience of Prezza was in his autumn years, when he was reduced to unveiling memorials. One such was a merchant navy memorial in Liverpool. I was in the car with the hardworking clergyman tasked with caring for JP. They were discussing over speakerphone the practicalities of Prescott’s visit. His voice – tonally and rhythmically – was that of a once-loved family comedian compelled to read audiobooks to cover the costs of his court appearances for multiple driving offences.

Throughout the discussion, whenever the subject of food came up, Prescott would, as if it were just an afterthought, suggest the option of fish and chips. As he did so, a charming nonchalance would enter his voice, which had until just a moment earlier been veritably hangdog. ‘Oh,’ he’d zing, ‘and after that we’ll just grab something to eat like, I don’t know, fish and chips’, ‘don’t worry about me I’ll have something easy like fish and chips’, that sort of thing. 

In the end the actual subject of the dinner to which Prescott was invited came up. ‘It’ll be beef carbonnade’, he was told. ‘What about the fish and chips?’ he replied. ‘Well, John, the food is already prepared.’ ‘But I want fish and chips.’ 

Reader, he never got his fish and chips. However, the next morning he was found having a vigorous argument about press freedom with the clergyman’s 12-year-old-son over a bowl of cheerios. Here’s hoping that New Labour heaven has a chippy – complete with guacamole – for Prezza to feast on.

The Dean Street Shuffle

It was today reported that the OG Britpop watering hole, the Groucho Club, has been shut temporarily in ‘association with crime’ and that the matter is a subject of police investigation. 

We have heard some rumours about what was occurring there.  On the basis of what we’ve been told, we would be very surprised if the Groucho reopened.

An Impulse Purchase

We’re on Bluesky now – we’ve been on Bluesky for a while, truth be told, but nobody else was until last week. And as the great migration has taken place, we’ve been lucky enough to benefit from a few nice shout-outs on the way. 

FT Weekend majordomo Janine Gibson calls us ‘consistently annoyingly good’ (true) and ‘smaller and scrappier than you think’ (also true); Marina O’Loughlin – whose unmasked face is practically on billboards these days – describes a Fence subscription as ‘an investment you absolutely won't regret’. 

They’re both right. We’ve had our best year yet, our new website is beautiful, and our newsletter – well, where do you start with our wonderful newsletter. Sign up today. 

‘Thames Fightin’ Words!’

We’re sure some of you will know and love the Four Tops’ 1970 classic, Still Water (Love). It’s possibly one of the best tunes to ever come out of Hitsville USA. For those unfamiliar, acquaint yourself here:

If Smokey Robinson had been keeping a keen eye on the vicissitudes of London media these days, he might have written a different refrain – JIM WATER-SON/ ROLLS DEEP – after the plucky editor of London Centric confronted the crooks and sharks who’ve turned Westminster Bridge into a hive of petty crime in full view of Parliament and Scotland Yard. For his trouble, he got himself in a few barneys with the bridge’s denizens, more than a few of whom appeared cheerily eager to sell their co-conspirators, quite literally, down the river.

It’s a great bit of journalism, bringing that Roger Cook heat. Read it in full here.

Frills or No Frills

When the vicar met the undertaker sounds like the start of a joke, but it’s the premise of one of our articles, in which our editor-at-large, Fergus Butler-Gallie, went to Lamb’s Conduit Street to meet Tom France, the current director of A. France and Son, who have been running their family-run undertakers business since 1764 – they even oversaw Nelson’s funeral. The past beats inside us like a second heart. Read the piece here. 

A Very Relaxing Time

Did you know that the nation’s farmers have been angry recently? It’s hardly been in the news at all. At all. Anyway, we’re thought that some of you might this video from Oliver Nohl-Oser, who had a grand day out.

One Glass from Alsace

At the bottom of the Caledonian Road, Hugh Corcoran continues to upload weekly screeds on his Instagram, which are now set on ‘private’. But we’ve been sent a few screenshots. A recent essay-length post accuses a food writer of being ‘unbelievably pretentious’ for not understanding why a bottle of wine costs £67, which some might say is rich coming from a man who refuses to have a wine list in his restaurant.

Despite it’s current most (in)famous resident, the ‘Cally’ is a wonderful road, laced with fascination, insurrection and carnage. We’re going to be re-upping our favourite documentary series of recent vintage over the festive period, the peerless Secret History of Our Streets, and we kick off with the Cally episode. If you’ve never seen this before, you’re in for a treat:

The Vintner’s Tales

Longstanding readers of this newsletter know that we have a passion for  antique BBC reels, grotty pubs and yellowing BBC reels. Cleaving to that theme, we also do love a bottle of reasonably priced Primitivo to be enjoyed responsibly and among friends.

But we do dare to dream – of wines from another galaxy – and this is where Dan Keeling comes in. DK is the brains behind the Noble Rot empire, which is just one of the best things in London, full stop.

Dan’s latest book, Who’s Afraid of Romanée Conti, doesn’t try to demystify wine – it takes on a voyage of bubbly discovery around the world’s most exciting regions and appellations, from Burgundy to Tenerife.  

It’s beautifully put together and also has a list of Dan’s favourite wines of all time at the back – some of which are reasonably affordable. But not for long. This is the ideal present for the vino buffs in your life. You can pick up a copy here. 

In Case You Missed It

Jonathan Liew on what football can, and must do, in the face of Israel’s war on Gaza. 

Elaine Low reports on a new front opening on the AI wars, as TV writers gear up for battle.

Claude S. Fischer on The Myth of the Loneliness Epidemic.

The Booker Prize recommends some funny pages from its six-decade history.

A comic about the baby camera-surveillance industrial complex, by Kristen Radtke for The Verge.

And Finally

Continuing in the theme of culinary elegies to the late Lord Prescott, this newsletter feels like a good time to re-up one of the big man’s final projects, Channel 5’s British Made with John Prescott, which featured the jocular octogenarian barrelling around the country in a Transit van, visiting different food factories and bothering the staff. 

We won’t lie to you and say that it’s a box-settable series: if you’ve seen one shot of Prezza in blue hair-netting, trust us, you’ve seen them all. But his visit to the Lea & Perrins factory in Worcestershire (likely place for them to be) provided one of the most hallucinatory clips of audio ever committed to .wav form. 

As the camera pans over vast reservoirs of festering fish and tamarind, Prescott breaks down a potted history of the ‘fifth taste’, umami, breaking down the history of monosodium glutamate, its propagation by Japanese industrialist Momofuku Ando, and the birth of instant ramen. 

Prior to the age of Heston and latterly, the David Chang, dude-food ‘umami bomb!’ culture of the 2010s, a lecture like this coming from the former Deputy Prime Minister would’ve been absolutely unthinkable. We didn’t even know there was a fifth taste in 2006! Stay tuned for clips of Angela Rayner discussing the macrobiotic benefits of water kefir in 2038. 

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That’s it for this week, we’ll be back on Saturday with our festive gift guide, which will be entirely composed of things from our shop page. Yes. Until then. If you enjoyed this mail-out, do give it a ‘like’ or a ‘comment’ or even better, buy something from our webstore here. 

All the best,

TF