Caught by the River

Flex culture, punk, blowjobs and…Chris Yates

30th March 2023

Robin Turner on this week’s unexpected cultural crossover.

When The Face magazine relaunched a few years back, I felt a bit of a nostalgic rush. That magazine was key to the success of a lot of bands we worked in the Heavenly Press Office back in the ’90s. It was a massive deal getting Face covers for Primal Scream, The Chemical Brothers, The Charlatans and finally The Vines a few years before the magazine folded. The relaunch was different though, aimed at a younger generation (isn’t all music coverage these days? Maybe that’s just my excuse for getting old). I was at peace with the idea that the magazine and myself were speaking a different language, but I subscribed to their newsletter hoping to learn a bit of this new dialect every once in a while.

When this morning’s mailout arrived (headed MARCH’S MOST READ: flex culture, punk, blowjobs and organised fun), I clicked on it as something to read while I eased myself into another miserable Spring morning. Between the naked landscape photography and the steamiest sex scenes in cinema was the headline ‘Chris Yates: the man behind the biggest carp catch in Britain’. It’s a whole new interview with one of the patron saints of Caught by the River in which Chris reveals he once did an illustration for The Face (anyone got that issue?), that ends with the solid gold credo ‘REMEMBER: A BAD DAY FISHING IS BETTER THAN A GOOD DAY AT WORK’. Maybe we’re not so different after all, me and The Face. Just need to work out what a flex culture is now.