Off The Fence: Sharing Ciggies with Wes Streeting

And our summer sale is about to end

Dear Readers,

Good afternoon, and welcome to Off The Fence: a newsletter, and that’s not the half of it. We’ve got a variety of excitements lined up today, but first it’s important to announce that Issue 20 is now officially sold out. Our best seller! The likely cause of this – apart from our singular editorial vision – is that we have had an ongoing summer sale, and hundreds of you have been taking us up on our offer. There are now only a handful of these tokens left, so do move fast at the link below using the code 5YOFENCE and press that glaring red button to score 20 percent off a print or digital subscription. Or you can click on the image below, either works.

Another thing: you can manage and update your address and card details on the account on our website, but if you do need help with that, or you would like to speak to us about an order, then you email us at support@the-fence.com.

There have been some lovely photos of Issue 20 soaking up the last rays of summer: in Bulgaria; on a table with a straw hat and in New York City, where legendary art director, Robert Newman, has praised the ‘absolutely brilliant and unique’ visual identity of the print mag, which is pretty cool.

As the latest issue is sold out, we are going to award the Bollinger champagne for fizziest snap of the magazine to… Jayne Manfredi’s pug. He did earn it. 

To business, this week: we’ve got a quartet of Gallagher parodies, a tip for Sadiq Khan and some unbelievably stupid names to share.

One Last Gasper

Somewhat predictably, the news that the Labour government plans to ban outdoor smoking has not proved popular in the office. While the Prime Minister confirmed the initial leak, it is very likely the initiative is the handiwork of Wes Streeting – who, as president of the National Union of Students in 2009, successfully campaigned to introduce minimum pricing for alcoholic drinks. When he was 26 years old. 

The Real World Comes Calling

The best thing about working at a quarterly print magazine? During the glamorous and giddy week at the end of November, we have relatively little to do. In the meantime, there is a lot on. Even as Issue 21 is being finessed, we’re already working on Issue 22, the Christmas edition.

We have a pair of ‘sizzling steaks’ in the features slot, but there is space for a few more, and we are also open across the whole of ‘Facts’ and ‘Etc’. If you’d like to write for us, do have a good old read of this pitch guide here, and then send through an email to editorial@the-fence.com and we’ll make some magic happen. Please send pitches within a week, as we will need drafts for the first week of October. As ever, we are trying to make this issue the best one yet.

TED Talk Tedium

Back in Issue 12, James Waddell wrote an outstanding investigation into the property baron-slash-philosopher, Hilary Lawson, who runs the IAI (Institute of Art and Ideas) and HowTheLightGetsInFestival, which is, would you believe it, spelt like that.

The piece, which is absolutely worth reading in its entirety, reports that Lawson, at the height of the Syrian civil war, reportedly spent an afternoon exhorting staff toward Bashar Al-Assad to speak at the Hay-on-Wye iteration of HowTheLightGetsIn, so that he may ‘tell his side of the story’. (An IAI legal representative told us ‘does not believe it has ever sought to invite Assad to events but would have no objection to doing so.)

‘This how much they offered me. It was an insult, not a fee. An insult.’

Rather less amusingly, the piece details the experiences of the many young graduates who worked there and found it an oppressive atmosphere of micro-management, with salaries allegedly starting at just £13,000 for the year, for a full-time job in London.

For this year’s London staging of HowTheLightGetsIn, held in the grounds of Kenwood House at the northern edge of Hampstead Heath, there’s a roster of daring thinkers – including TF favourite, Guy Shrubsole – but there’s also a scheduled appearance from the Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan. We’re delighted that he’s found the time – and we do hope he’s getting paid. 

Cousin Clodovis

Last week, we asked our readers if they knew anyone with a sillier name than Sally Mash, Noel Gallagher’s new girlfriend. Thank you, then, to Charles Clegg, who sent us a veritable treasure trove of little-known nominative gold, which we will share with you here. These are all, as you will discover, very much real.

There is a Brazilian theologian called Clodovis Boff. Agamemnon Crumpton is an Oxford student and rower. Then there’s Oxford Wang (who also went to Oxford). This Californian academic has a name that melodises on your lips. Meet a Plymouth hotelier called Spike Bastard. In a pleasing case of appelative determinism, Vivianna Spaghetti works in food. A question for us all: how do you pronounce Simon Numphud? And we end with a real-life Martin Amis character: a former Canadian investment banker called Tariq Fancy.

Ian Martin, screenwriter and all-round mensch, writes in with the following.

‘In the late 1960s, my brother Paul had three mates at school called Kev. And their surnames – I swear on the bones of Christ – were

NEAT,

SMART, and 

TIDY 

You heard. Kev Neat. Kev Smart. Kev Tidy.’ 

A Stately Pleasure-dome Decree

Most men remember the talk of ‘having trials’ from your schooldays, when professional football clubs would scout the best players and ask them to the training ground to see what they could do. ‘Having trials’, like many other teenage milestones, involved a lot of self-fashioning, bullshit and bluster. But dreams and fantasies can sometimes be made real.

It’s in this spirit that you should read Stephen Smith’s account of accompanying his young son to a trial at Crystal Palace. A little marvel, you might say. 

Where You Bin?

We are, obviously, the UK’s only newsletter, but out there in the international waters of the wider internet, we do acknowledge others at sea. One of our very favourites, Garbage Day, is an award-winning newsletter from tech reporter Ryan Broderick. 

Three times a week (give or take), Garbage Day stuffs as much internet junk as possible into one email. So you don't have to go find it yourself. Memes, weird viral videos, internet drama, whatever the hell is happening with AI – it's all there.  Make your inbox a little less professional and remember what it was like to have fun online again. 

You can check it out here.

18-00-02 Was My Number

Speaking of awards, in our upcoming Issue 22, we award a new prize: the Carmen Callil Memorial Prize for the Most Intimidating Person in British Publishing. The votes, we must tell you, are in, and we look forward to announcing the winner.

For those of you unfamiliar with her legend, Callil, while a trailblazer with a stack of achievements, was known for what can be charitably described as ‘high-handed behaviour’, as this particularly relatable anecdote from her friend Julian Barnes illustrates.

Ordine Robotico

It didn’t get much airtime outside the architectural press, but earlier in June, John Outram’s Sphinx House became the youngest building to be listed – it’s only 26 years since it was built.

Outram’s dazzling skills are best seen at the Judge Business School in Cambridge, seen below, and we wish he could have sprayed his polycultural vision with greater frequency.

Funkyyyyyyyyyyyy

Outram, who is now 90 years old, is celebrating his tenth decade by dominating Instagram with a feed that is both bewildering and comprehensive, a retrospective of his long life and vaunting career that is seasoned with the odd sensuous selfie. John: we salute you.

Serious sauce for an aged architect

In Case You Missed It

What is going on with The River Café’s podcast? Simran Hans celebrates the eccentricities of the Hammersmith restaurant’s audio stream.

Ted Chiang with an excoriating take on why AI won’t make art.

Francisco Garcia on the weirdness and warmth of Gibraltar.

Robert Watts asks: How much money do Oasis actually have?

And Finally

Younger subscribers may have found the past week of Oasismania bemusing, since it is hard to communicate just how much of a stranglehold Oasis held over the zeitgeist in their mid-90s pomp. For those of us who were there, whether we liked the band or not, they were nigh-on inescapable. 

Nowhere is this better illustrated than the profusion of parodies that crowded the field of Britpop’s parallel  – and, in our view, superior – golden age: the world of mainstream British TV comedy.

Consider the Fast Show’s take.

Which was not even their finest riff on the Gallaghers.

Or the blink-and-you’ll-miss-it blast of the actor Kevin Eldon.

But the premier parody, the first among equals, must still be Harry Enfield and Kathy Burke’s indispensable, inimitable, and undeniable turn as Kevin & Perry, born again Madchester diehards.

A stinging rebuke to anyone claiming Oasis never contributed to the culture.

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That’s it for this week, we’ll be back next Tuesday with another outing, and a reminder that our all-long summer sale is breathing its final puffs, so do subscribe with the code 5YOFENCE while you can. If there are any issues, do reach out at support@the-fence.com and we’ll attend to you promptly. Until then.

All the best,

TF