Off The Fence: You Say Potato

And we pay tribute to Val Kilmer's comic genius

Dear Readers,

Good afternoon, and welcome to Off The Fence, a newsletter that is freshly prepared every week. Issue 23 is in stores from Thursday, which means this is your final chance to bag two pieces of post in a week from a quarterly magazine. Sign up today and get five magazines for the price of four. Just click on the image below or the garish orange-red button.

Now, we will be back again on Thursday to give you a full rundown of the issue, but first, let us announce the prize for the winningest snap of Issue 22. Predictably, competition was fierce, and we were deluged with pics from around the planet. There were great entries from Adam G, Alex C, Fred Clark and Olympia Campbell, but the winner is Nick L, for this fabulous photo of Gabriel Garcia Marquez enjoying The Fence in Cartagena. Congratulations, Nick, the overpriced fizz is yours. We’ll be handing out another bottle of Bollinger for the next issue, too, of course.

Our new vehicle, Capital Letter, is proving very popular. Our last outing – what we regarded as an incontrovertible list of London’s 25 best pubs – has, for some reason, stirred opinion. On Thursday, we’ve got another buffet of tips and treats for you. Do join us on the day.

Right, let’s it going. On Archer Street, where we have our office, there is a newish shop called Spud Bros, which sells baked potatoes. The queue is sometimes 30 minutes long. For baked potatoes. Retailing at £12. We sent our new editorial assistant, Ralph Jeffreys, to meet the punters.

The Spudfather

The queue is an eclectic mix of nationalities, as people come from far and wide for a taste of the spud. China, Singapore, Germany, Paris. There are Brits too: a couple from Newcastle have traveled down for the day, along with two groups from Birmingham. The most animated are a pair who’ve come over from France. Coming to Spud Bros, they say, is one of their ‘three things to do in London’, along with seeing ‘the Big Ben’. When these travel priorities are questioned, their response is philosophical: ‘You see it’s not just a potato, it’s a spud’.

This genuinely was the length of the queue yesterday

One thing unites them all. Everyone is here because of TikTok. A cascade of influencers have lent their digital muscle to the spud cause – Mr Beast, The Sidemen, Alex Warren – and so the hordes amass in their wake, seized by a desire to see what the hype is all about, venturing boldly into the eye of the internet storm.

Even inside the shop, a Total Marketing approach that would make Johan Cruyff blush is implemented with rigour. Indeed, those serving the spuds aren’t just there to dish out the potatoes. Their remit is to serve and create ‘content’ alongside carbohydrate. On the door, an Australian girl is equipped with an orange hi-vis and a bouncer’s black cap. Her job is ‘crowd control’.

Manager Nikolaj is in suit trousers and a quarter-zip. He is an exemplar of the Spud Bros lifestyle, focused entirely on ‘virality’ and brand promotion. He speaks of the brand's history: from selling potatoes in a disused tram in Preston from 1953, to being bought by the current ‘bros’ in 2020, who have spearheaded their viral internet presence. For Nikolaj, it’s all about the excitement of bringing the old traditional image of the British baked potato into the new world of social media. As he puts it, the goal is ‘to make the potato sexy again’. Soon, a complimentary potato – The Spudfather (£12) – arrives and Nikolaj smiles warmly. ‘There are no secrets here,’ he says.

Hotel Britannica

One of the star articles of Issue 23 has just been published online, in which an anonymous clinician details their astonishing life, running a GP service for 450 asylum seekers in a hotel in the north of England. It supplies new insight into one of the most politically contentious issues of the day, and does so from a position of self-evident empathy. It’s been tipped by the Guardian and the Financial Times and is a truly superlative piece of writing.

We are always looking for more ‘insider’ pieces, especially if they help readers understand misunderstood or misrepresented industries. There’s space in Issue 24 for one more – please do get in touch at editorial@the-fence.com and we’ll get back to you promptly.

Brand Management

After a long investigation, Russell Brand has been charged with rape and indecent assault by the Metropolitan Police. Brand denies the allegations.

The comedian was one of the most famous people in the world, feted by political leaders. Have a gander at this liveblog of Brand’s summit with Owen Jones at the Guardian HQ for a reminder. Henry Jeffreys worked as the publicist for Brand’s first book, My Booky Wook, in the late noughties – his account of his labours, published back in Issue 9, remains an essential read.

Made to Measure

Mark Powell, the celebrity tailor, has been the victim of a burglary, and has taken to Instagram, where he has published a reel asking his followers to give him information so he can ‘deal with it’, not the police. He’s received messages of support from Jimmy Bullard and Johnny Vaughan, among others. It’s an amusingly ‘old-school’ approach from Powell, who as we detailed at length in a newsletter three years ago, has gone out of his way to hint at links with ‘proper’ villains, even boasting of cutting suits for the Krays (while they were in prison). There’s nowhere quite like Soho is there?

What Joey the Crow Didn’t Know

After a brief absence from our pages, our pints correspondent, Jimmy McIntosh, has returned. At the start of the year, he travelled to Canning Town with a couple of likely lads for an afternoon’s carousing. Along with Tottenham Hale, E16 is London’s fastest gentrifying neighbourhood; as Jimmy writes, it is ‘London at warp speed’. As ever, it’s a wonderful dispatch from a relatively unknown corner of the capital.

The Grantham Anthem

It’s now 12 years to the day since Margaret Thatcher died, would you believe it. Just before Christmas, Kieran Morris and Fergus Butler-Gallie – a pair of dedicated Thatcherologists – travelled to south-west Lincolnshire, to the market town where the young Margaret learned everything worth knowing in her father’s shop. Do read it here.

The Stephen A. Schwarzman Soft Play Area

In this economy – especially in this economy! – you really have to salute the entrepreneurs who are printing cash for concept, and so it is with Jaego’s House, a west London establishment that seems to function as a bar and restaurant for the parents to get pissed while the children thwack each other in the ballpit. Membership is just under £4,000 for a family of four, and that’s before you’ve had anything to eat or drink. It’s just genius. Jesse’s House is opening in Parson’s Green and Orly’s House is soon to drop in East Sheen. With Blackstone just pumping in more capital, you can expect to see further developments soon.

Government by Television

Now that Keir Starmer has mandated that every classroom in Britain will watch the television series, Adolescence, there’s not much point in fulminating about the programme. Or is there? It’s worth listening to Professor Carlene Firmin, a safeguarding pioneer, on the subject.

You can also watch an interview between her and Ciaran Thapar here. (Ciaran is also appearing in our upcoming Issue 23):

Mappa Mundi

Have you seen how incredibly stylish our tote bags are? Just look at this picture of illustrator Miki Lowe sporting one in the Spanish desert.

Designed by Studio Mathias Clottu, they’re beautiful to touch and to hold, and are priced at a very agreeable rate too. We have got an ever-dwindling supply of magazines, maps and tote bags left, so do make sure to pick yours up pronto.

In Case You Missed It

Is Pink (the musical artist) more popular than Taylor Swift? The FT say: yes.

Oliver Eagleton persuasively argues that the British left should be wary of Gary Stevenson.

James Meek is one of the main reasons to read the London Review of Books, and his 10,000-worder on Greenland has just dropped. Icy!

The inside story of the Blenheim Palace gold toilet heist.

The Face went to Ottessa Moshfegh’s auction. Ottessa Moshfegh hosting an auction? Recession indicator.

Why do we love to watch Grey’s Anatomy when we are depressed? Louis Staples investigates.

And Finally

Val Kilmer was known for Heat and Batman Forever and dating Michelle Pfeiffer and going mad but he started out as a funny guy, playing the lead in some movies that time has not been particularly kind to.

Still, even after his ego became unmanageable even by Hollywood standards, Kilmer retained an acid tongue and a magic sense of timing. His collaboration with David Mamet produced a largely forgettable film called Spartan, but also produced this cacklingly brutal DVD commentary, which we commend to you all here.

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That’s not it for this week, we’ll be back on Thursday to launch Issue 23. If you enjoyed yourself, drop a line below. Do remember to subscribe today and if you have any points of order, please email support@the-fence.com and we will come back to you there. Now here’s a little something for you to ponder: Queen Elizabeth II was born in the same year as Hugh Hefner. Until the next time.

All the best,

TF