Off The Fence: The Real Housewives of Chipping Norton

And we've got a buffet of videos for you today

Dear Readers,

Good afternoon, and welcome to Off The Fence, a newsletter of impeccable moral character. As we relayed on Friday, Issue 23 has been dispatched to all subscribers this morning, after a Brexit border-related stopover of some ten days. It’s been exquisitely frustrating for us all, not least because this issue is the top of the tops, and we are all straining at the leash for you to hold it in your hands. It will be landing on doormats from Brixton to Barnstaple tomorrow and Thursday, and with our international followers soon after.

There have been peals of delight from those of you who’ve picked up a copy from the shops, with one perceptive reader labelling Issue 23 ‘breathtakingly good’. There is a list of stockists here, and we are thrilled to see the magazine at E5 Bakehouse in Clapton, snug alongside some choice pastries. Click on that beautiful image below to bag your copy.

Right now, there are only a handful – no more than 15 – of tokens giving you 20 percent off any and all subscriptions, that’s print, digital or both, and gift subscriptions, too. Just use the code SPRING20 at the checkout.

On Thursday, we’re back with another outing from our newish newsletter, Capital Letter. Last time out, we visited the campest church in London and revised our view on The Yellow Bittern. Do join us there; we’re having lots of fun and will continue to do so.

To business. We’ve got a festival of ludicrous clips for you today, but we start off with a story from a corner of Merry England.

The Real Housewives of Chipping Norton

Those of you who enjoyed Claudia Cockerell’s dispatch from Bamford Country will be excited to learn that reality TV is coming to the Cotswolds, with Plum Sykes providing the voiceover and working on the scripts. We made a few calls around the Oxfordshire-Gloucestershire border to find out more.

According to one insider, Jade Holland Cooper is definitely in the cast. Jade is married to Julian Dunkerton, the founder of Superdry, who once said ‘I own a private jet, but it’s a tool, rather than an indulgence’.

Other semi-famous names mooted include Savannah Miller, best known for being Sienna Miller’s sister, and Sophie Stanbury, whose sister, Caroline, was on Ladies of London, a show that is perhaps the ur-text in the burgeoning genre of London Noir.

If you know anything about the show, we’d love to speak with you – do drop us a line at editorial@the-fence.com.

A Question of Intelligence

Reviewing the new intake Labour MPs, we were fascinated to come across the Wikipedia of Mike Tapp, who replaced Natalie Elphicke as the Member for Dover and Deal.

Is the name ‘Mike Tapp’ a case of nominative determinism? His life has been so embedded in the clandestine parts of the British state that his birthday is given as ‘1984/1985’.

Laurels of Praise

Congratulations to all the nominees for this year’s Paul Foot Awards, with the longlist replete with entries from upstart publications. It’s great to see Abi Whistance’s investigation into the Big Help empire for the Liverpool Post receive notice, and Jim Waterson’s deep dive into why Lime bikes keep breaking Londoners’ legs is one of the many compelling pieces he’s published in just seven months.

Over at York Way, Henry Dyer and Rob Evans have scrutineered the activities of Labour peer, Lord Evans, who has, it seems, been offering cash for access to ministers.

Henry has written two blockbusters for these pages. The first was a tipster’s guide to which Tory donor forced through the grouse shooting exemption during lockdown (it’s now very obvious who it was). Next up, there was a gleeful scythe through Josh Hawley’s tenure as a teacher at St Paul’s Boys’ School in Barnes, where the American senator made popcorn to watch the US invasion of Iraq (yes, really).

Despite what the Boomer Cassandras claim, there is still a significant appetite for proper journalism in Britain.

Such Great Heights

This Sunday, Britain’s tallest journalist, Ed Caesar, is running the Manchester marathon in aid of Bookbanks, a charity he’s helping to start in that rain-swept city. Quite simply, Bookbanks aims to put books in food banks. It’s a fantastic cause led by a terrifyingly tall and talented man. You should absolutely donate some money here.

Charming the Birds from the Trees

Thank you to Chris Coates for bringing this astoundingly charming documentary to our attention, which follows a Chinese fisherman who has trained cormorants to work with him. Deep, lulling, magical:

A Diamond Geezer

Alas, the release of the new Peter André vehicle, Jafaican, has been so widely splashed that we cannot justify covering it at the length it merits. Needless to say, we are excited for a bold new era of rich embarrassment in British cinema, one that makes Sex Lives of the Potato Men look like Barry Lyndon.

Allow us to draw something out of the archives by way of recompense. It’s an interview with a former Kray associate operating with the moniker ‘Toby VanJudge’. He’s a barrister dressed like a mélange of Dangerous World-era Michael Jackson and Flavor Flav, yet orating with the mellifluous tones of an Anglo-Irish landowner supping a glass of port at the Kildare Street Club. Truly, one of the most brilliantly bizarre videos we’ve ever encountered:

Hold the Phone

Every year, the lineup for the HowLightGetsIn Festival takes a fruitier turn. Next month, Jordan Stephens, Aaron Maté, Richard Tice and Malcolm Rifkind are up to Hay-on-Wye to partake in the ‘world’s largest philosophy and music festival’. (There will be a DJ set from Hot Chip’s Joe Goddard.)

Three summers ago, we published an investigation into Hilary Lawson, the property magnate and academic overseeing the festivities, which describes a chaotic working atmosphere, with graduates being offered full-time jobs at his Institute of Art and Ideas for just £13,000 a year. It is also alleged that at the height of the Syrian civil war, Lawson reportedly spent an afternoon exhorting staff to contact representatives of the Syrian Arab Republic in order to invite Bashar al-Assad to speak at HowTheLightGetsIn, apparently hoping that the Syrian president would travel to Hay-on-Wye to ‘tell his side of the story’.

We are always looking for deeply reported pieces of this calibre, ideally with a comic underside. Do have a read of the pitch guide here, and please do get in touch with us at editorial@the-fence.com, and we will get back to you as soon as we can.

In Case You Missed It

The Bronx is up and the Battery is down! The latest design for New York’s subway map is in. Zoe Guttenplan charts the many attempts to capture the city’s sprawling network.

Labour’s straightjacket: John Lanchester writes about Rachel Reeves’ dilemma, and the parlous state of the British economy, all with his usual brilliance.

Lamorna Ash asks: can I become a Christian in a year?

‘I had a gay fling with a gun-toting TALIBAN terrorist in Afghanistan – I’m a financial adviser from Bath but can’t stop extreme tourism.’

Antonia Hitchens reports from the court of King Donald, at the brazen sycophants looking to curry favour with the new regime.

And Finally

With the passing of Pope Francis, the theatre of the Roman Catholic Church comes into its own – there will be the ceremonies of the Papal funeral, the gathering of the College of Cardinals and eventually white smoke. The success of the film Conclave means there are more Vaticanologists out there than at previous elections. We’re obviously waiting for our own informed Foreign Secretary’s take on this after his sensational previous form. Doubtless, there will be further mention of the politicking in future newsletters as runners and riders in the conclave become clearer; though, as a starter for ten, keep an eye on the ambitious Venetian, Cardinal Parolin.

Now, it seems most appropriate to share some of Pope Francis’s greatest moments. Francis was a Pope of contradictions – undoubtedly with the common touch, capable of reaching parts and people to whom traditional Catholicism was unappealing, and yet he was probably the most authoritarian Pope in decades, known for giving short shrift to his political opponents in the Curia. He was a liberal in many of his instincts – reprimanding the forces of conservatism both in and outside the church – yet he was, what the obituarists call ‘a man of his time’, with his continued insistence on referring to the staffing of the Vatican as a hotbed of ‘frociaggine’, an Italian slur which means exactly what you think it does.

As a man who met millions, there are endless excellent videos to choose from. We’re opting for the time he invited a Cuban circus troupe to his weekly audience. Requiescat in Pace.

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We’ll be back on Thursday for those of you who’ve signed up for Capital Letter, and all the magazines will be arriving with subscribers, too. There’ll be lots of articles going up on our website. Exciting times for everyone concerned. Remember, we’ve got a few SPRING20 codes left here:

If you’d like to speak to us about an order, please email support@the-fence.com. In 14th-century England, one in three men was called ‘John’.

All the best,

TF