Off The Fence: The Collected Works of Paul McKenna

And we've got free Issue 20s!

Dear Readers,

Good afternoon, and welcome back to Off The Fence, your weekly – and increasingly punctual – mailout from The UK’s Only Magazine.

It is finished: Issue 23 has now been signed off by every level of our team, from our beloved sub-editor, Paul Fleckney, to our writers, illustrators, art directors and, last and always least, the editors. And good grief, it is a stone-cold stunner of an issue, quality just dripping off every page. If you like peeks inside previously unbreachable worlds, profiles of quixotic figures, and essays from the most talented young writers in Britain today, you will adore reading this issue just as much as we loved compiling it.

Last year’s London Noir edition, Issue 20 – the fastest-selling yet – still gets occasional messages from fevered collectors, looking to see if we still have a copy or two in the dustiest corners of our warehouse. We have checked, God we’ve checked, but no, it is gone, gone, gone.

The feline’s choice

Unless… We thought, as a salve to our saddened collectors and to everyone else besides, that we’d reward anyone signing up to a subscription today with a spotless digital copy of our rarest edition – mailed to you, personally, by the editor. How can you turn that down? You couldn’t. Well, you shouldn’t. That’s print, digital or both.

Last week’s Capital Letter is available to read here, and it really is very good indeed, if we don’t mind saying so ourselves. There’s another buffet of tips and a featurette on the future of London’s fine dining scene. Do sign up, and you might even become a paying subscriber, too.

As part of our remit to take the UK’s Only Magazine stateside as often as possible, the editor dialled into Daisy Alioto & Francis Zierer’s podcast, Tasteland, last week for a wide-ranging chat on all things TF and TF-adjacent. If you’ve ever wondered how this magazine, or this newsletter, comes to be each week, you will find your questions and queries answered pretty fulsomely across this 50-minute tête-à-tête-à-tête. Charlie – who loves writing about himself just as much as he likes talking about himself – commends Daisy and Francis for being such consummate hosts.

On to the maritals. In this week’s mailout, we’ve got a rousing defence of the Nick Loeuvre, a weigh-in on the transatlantic journo wars, and some reluctant praise for the rowdy Geordies who besieged the capital last weekend. But first, a Soho saunter through Paddy’s Day revelry from Rachel Kelly.

Der’s More to Soho Dan Dis

Where better to undertake a survey of Irishness than on the stout-strewn streets of rainy Soho, not merely a stomping ground for Hibernian media workers, bemulleted Mescalites, and at least two pubs claiming to peddle the best Guinness in London, but also the site of the first English church dedicated to St Patrick since the Reformation.

Having presumed that queues for the latter would be out the door, we turned instead to those drinking dens where Ireland and Irishness might more easily be interrogated, and spent a chilly afternoon on the hunt for tricolored treasure.

Our first stop was the cosy basement of The Toucan on Carlisle Street. Arriving just as it opened, we found the pub already packed with a mix of Irish people and the kind of people who’d quite like to be mistaken for being Irish (English people). When asked how the celebrations in London differed to those back home, one Irishwoman said that ‘the further away from home you are, the more Irish you get. That’s why I prefer celebrating here. It just feels like a normal day at home.’

Her friends agreed that there seemed to be more Irish outside of Ireland than in Ireland. They politely omitted any mention of the housing shortage and cost of living crisis that may have driven these people, snakelike, from Ireland’s shores, preferring to emphasise how this added to the festive feel.

An English patron was more simplistic in his view. The Hibernaissance was ‘all to do with the Guinness. That's why people are interested.’ Indeed, another woman argued ‘We Brits just love drinking so we want to follow the crowd.’ Another man noted that you wouldn’t even know Irish celebrities such as Cillian Murphy or Colin Farrell were Irish, ‘were it not for interviews’. Presumably this is because their Irishness is not helpfully announced via other means, like shamrock branded clothing or the presence of pigs under their arms.

‘He [Colin Farrell] just won a Golden Globe for The Penguin’ he continued, ‘there’s nothing Irish about that.’ Left to puzzle over such gems, talk turned back to Guinness, and ‘the women who are drinking it more'. 'That’s why there was that shortage back in December.’ He also noted the success of Guinness’s non-alcoholic variant, Guinness 0.0 but was unsure ‘why anyone would drink that. It’s more expensive.’

At The Devonshire, one man told us ‘there’s this mythical thing about the Irish that makes it very easy to look out for – you know, like leprechauns and stuff like that.’ That he was saying this while wearing a large, floppy leprechaun hat made this point, regrettably, inarguable. One startled Irish couple, trying to navigate their way around the already packed pub, said they found St Patrick’s Day celebrations ‘more traditional’ in London. ‘Dublin’s Patrick’s Day is very slick, very artsy, very corporate. This is quite wholesome’.

When asked about the resurgence in Irish culture, they said ‘what we’ve decided to focus on culturally has become a bit more mainstream as well. 20, or 30, years ago all the songs were about famine, immigration, starvation, hunger. We’ve finally dropped the ‘poor us’ act and have decided that we're as good as anyone else.’ From their conclusions, the forgetting of Irish culture within Irish culture is what has led to the recent popularity of Irish culture.

Perhaps no one embodied this easing of cultural memory more than the Irishman we found navigating the green throngs of drinkers in felt hats and Kiss Me glasses, who told us he’d forgotten it was Patrick’s Day entirely.

‘You’re only after reminding me!’ he said. For others, it was clear that the Irish have the English to thank for their current lofty place in the cultural sphere. ‘I think the problem is the English don’t have enough culture themselves’ remarked one such interlocutor, ‘so they’re busying around trying to steal someone else's'.

A controversial view, which we repeat here without comment, except to add their final and insistent addendum: 'Make sure you get that in.’

Getting the Band Back Together

James Ramsden has just shuttered his restaurant, Pidgin, and joined a band called Hope of the States. He’s about to turn 40, and he has been going ‘on tour’. In this piece, he writes with great vim and humour about his immaculate mid-life crisis.

It is also a charming portrait of his friendship with his former business partner and current bandmate, Sam Herlihy.

He’s the Business

Everyone is familiar with the yawnsome concept of the ‘stoner flick’. But with his new film – Marching Powder – have Nick Love and Danny Dyer made the first cocaine comedy? Well yes and no: the film, despite the title and marketing blitz, is not really about cocaine, but is more of a satire on The Way We Live Now. A couple of the characters are ridiculous, some of the supporting actors are miscast and the plot doesn’t really hold water, but there are some genuine magnificent jokes within. When was the last time there was a properly funny satire about British life in the cinema?

Love’s films are imperfect, but they are made with real energy and playfulness. His critics often accuse him of poor taste – but if you rewatch Bridget Jones’s Diary, which is now regarded as cosy intergenerational family fun, there are jokes about genocide, Auschwitz and a character being a ‘total poof, of course.’

Marching Powder is currently playing in cinemas – and we recommend that you see it.

Pauline Playaz

Everyone knows about the Wagner Group, the mercenary outfit headed by the departed Yevgeny Prigozhin, pictured here in his underpants. But have you heard of the Mozart Group, a defunct ‘ethical mercenary’ group, headed by a colonel who was educated at St Paul’s Boys School?

A few years ago, Jake Warren went to Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese to meet the colonel and his wild geese – it’s a rollicking read.

A Message From Our Friends at New York Review of Architecture

As you may have guessed, New York Review of Architecture reviews architecture in New York. Trading glossy ads and architectural photography for irrepressible, occasionally impertinent criticism, NYRA publishes some of the most ambitious writing on cities and design today, from an in-depth analysis of housing policy to a postmortem on the Power Broker to paeans to public pissoirs, hot-sheet hotels, and Tony Soprano’s kitchen.

Many love us for Wrecking Ball, our dedicated attack column, and for our murine mascot, the NYRAT. Others hate us for our back-slanted italics, but we’ll let you judge that for yourself.

Mostly, our readers appear to enjoy the magazine. Here is what a few of them have said:

‘Unlike most publications I don’t feel like they’re trying to sell me a condo. Their writers have a point of view and, in most cases, good taste.’

‘A cross between classic 1980s Village Voice/1970s Chicago Reader/1990s New York Review of Books and the New Yorker.’

‘Not an architect, and not a New Yorker, but have fallen in love with NYRA regardless!’

In a special offer for our friends across the pond, subscribers to The Fence will receive a complimentary tote bag when they subscribe to NYRA. So what are you waiting for?

At White House Farm

Michael Gillard’s newsletter, The Upsetter, is one of only two Substacks that we pay for, and his most recent outing is an absolute marmalade-dropper.

Last year, the New Yorker’s Heidi Blake published a long-read into the case of Jeremy Bamber, who has now spent 40 years behind bars. Evidence that Blake has uncovered casts doubt on the guilt of Bamber, but the publication is now refusing to disclose the tape-recorded interview to Bamber’s legal team, who are accusing the New Yorker of an obstruction of justice in very strident terms.

Bamber, now 64 years old, is understandably devastated. We hear he’s not the first source to have been let down by Heidi Blake.

Not Around The Eyes

Paul McKenna has been a TV mainstay for three decades. Yes, three decades. He got his break in the early ‘90s, peddling cruise ship hypnotism to the daytime telly crowd, as evidenced in this dazzlingly drab VHS rip of 1993’s The Hypnotic World Of Paul McKenna, in which our hero makes people fall over backwards in the flat-carpeted rooms of two star hotels.

Since then, the bespectacled mesmerist has evolved; from ‘Butlins illusionist who looks like he does IT for the Gestapo’ to ‘Final Boss of LinkedIn self-help gurus’. Across literally dozens of books – with titles like I Can Make You Thin, I Can Make You Rich, I Can Make You Sleep, and Hypnotic Gastric Band – McKenna has set out his stall to cure any and all problems plaguing the British public, and in so doing garnered a pleasingly bafflesome mix of celebrity clients, including Daryl Hannah (stage fright), David Beckham (confidence), Ellen DeGeneres (smoking), Rob Brydon (fear of flying), and Roger Daltrey, Stephen Fry, Sophie Ellis-Bextor, Rob Brydon, Sir Nick Faldo and Courtney Love (miscellaneous).

His latest book is a paean to manifesting, the speculative self-help practice of visualising your end goals, and believing in them so hard that they are miraculously achieved. Detractors may decry this technique as being functionally indistinguishable from ‘thinking about how much you want a thing’ and thus a fraudulent basis for solving real-world problems. Not so The Sun, who have serialised a 25-minute ‘trance’ to help their readers quit smoking, no less than three times this week. Not a bad bit of business for a literary agent on a tight deadline.

If you feel intrigued by such tactics, you might be interested in how McKenna solves the bigger issues in his own life. Thankfully, we needn’t wonder. Speaking to the Guardian in 2016, McKenna made a series of statements which have long been holy lore around TF Towers. Among such pearlies as ‘I have a very eclectic mix of friends: Paul Oakenfold, Harvey Weinstein…’ or ‘Whenever myself and Ryan Seacrest, who I met in 2010, are having one of those rich moments, we text each other “LTD”: living the dream’ – he admitted that his search for love drove him to a particularly useful technique d’amour.

‘I’ve dated a lot of beautiful women’ he blushed to Megan Carnegie. ‘A friend pointed out I didn’t actually like them, and advised me to make an Excel spreadsheet to find out who I really loved. It came down to Kate [Davey, his long-time PA]. We’d worked together for many years; thankfully she felt the same way and now we’re engaged’.

Paul and Kate – congratulations: here’s to LTD forever.

A Weekday Treat

Merchandise! Get yer merchandise, beautiful merchandise, gleaming in our shop window for you to peruse and purchase. There’s totes in three styles, printed maps of Soho ciggy shops (now sold out) and Liverpool legends, and of course, our back issues – whichever are left, anyway; we’ve sold out of most of them, so buy now to avoid disappointment and the dreaded second-hand market.

Rap-a-tap-tap on the image below and get yourself some gear. Whatever you go for, you’ll love it.

Flog on the Tyne

Well done Newcastle. There, we said it. It was quite nice to see the club put paid to their seven-decade trophy drought, sweeter still for lumbering Northumbrian giant, Dan Burn, to head in their opening goal.

On the topic of heads, and their continued status atop shoulders, we teamed up with Davey Jones all the way back in Issue 10 to foretell how the Magpies’ new owner, HRH Mohammed Bin Salman, might enjoy a night on the Toon with club legend, Wor’ Kev Keegan. We put it up on Bluesky here, where you can find us much more often these days – if you’re on there too, give us a follow.

In Case You Missed It

A St Patrick’s Day treat in the form of Ali Watkins on Vincent Conlon, the IRA’s gun-runner of Philadelphia.

Carrie Battan investigates the perils of nicotine pouches in a piece we’re very angry the New Yorker did not headline ‘you snus, you lus’.

Will Lockett tells us why SpaceX’s Starship project was, and always will be, doomed.

Miriam Frankel asks whether geology is racist. TLDR: Geologists say, yes.

TF features editor Séamas O’Reilly’s son lost his first tooth last week, so he turned to forging government paperwork. Now available in digital form.

And Finally

Francis Bacon’s spectacular paintings, not to mention his legendary reputation for carousing, have etched him into the high firmament of TF’s most beloved 20th century artists. As such, it’s a delight to get sent what is, to us, a brand new slice of Bacon; sizzled across our desk this week by dissolute art ponce and self-proclaimed ‘podcasting ninja’ Joe Bishop.

This footage shot in (we think?) the late eighties shows his home studio in all its glorious squalor. Marvel as the man who literally no one called Frankie Pork, offers a tour to art critic David Sylvester, in the company of Bacon’s sometime roommate, and eventual beneficiary of said apartment, John Edwards. It’s a remarkably free-flowing dispatch from the florid mind, and grubby environs, of a true great.

‘I don’t want my plates and cups to be dirty’ he says, while presiding over his vile demesne, ‘but nonetheless I like a chaotic atmosphere’.

The exact provenance of the video is unclear, but it appears to be lightly edited footage for a documentary project we can’t ascertain. We are extremely desirous of seeing more of Francis in his prime, so perhaps one of our more learned readers could point us in the direction of its source film, in order that we may return with a heftier portion of Bacon anon.

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That’s it for this week, and we look forward to joining you again next Tuesday. Do let us know if you enjoyed it by dropping a ‘like’ in the comments below. If you’d like to speak to us, you can email us at editorial@the-fence.com. Do buy a tote bag or a magazine or one of the maps here – it will make you very happy.

All the best,

TF