Photos from The Queen’s Hall (Flickr), The Idler, Wilf Whitty (Flickr), Simona Nica
As the cows are finally herded back on to Worthy Farm and Reading’s last torched Portaloo stops smouldering, we wave goodbye to festival season for another year. Except, that is, in one chi-chi corner of Notting Hill, where they’re gearing up for a less than ordinary celebration for a less than ordinary publication.
The Idler is 20 this month and the Tabernacle, a resplendent former church, is the venue for the celebrations. But why might we care?
Well, the ethos of the magazine – founded in 1993 by journalist Tom Hodgkinson and author Gavin Pretor-Pinney – is one that resonates with us. They state: “The Idler is an annual periodical that campaigns against the work ethic and promotes liberty, autonomy and responsibility.”
And if there’s any time in life where dialling down your workaholism and embracing some self-sufficiency makes sense, then it is surely ours.
There’s a distinct high50 flavour to The Idler’s allies, too: Tim Lott, Will Self, Jonathan Ross and QI’s John Lloyd are among recent Idlists.
“Yeah, an Idler/high50 Venn diagram would see a pretty big crossover,” agrees Hodgkinson.
Don’t be fooled by their laissez-faire attitude, though. The Idler’s empire of effortlessness is an industrious one. Back in 2011, the magazine’s blueprint was applied to the Idler Academy, a bookshop/coffee shop/intellectual gym, which provides libertas per cultum (freedom through education).
The West London HQ, complete with a small oasis of a garden, has provided everything from ukulele lessons (more of that later), calligraphy courses, literary lectures, philosophical pondering, and even their unique take on vinyl listening clubs.
Versions of which then began popping up at countless summer festivals. Port Eliot has been a staple, and if, a few weekends back, you escaped to the Oxfordshire wilds for Wilderness, you may well have encountered Tom leading some Idler alumni in stimulating merriment.
The Idler festival 19-22 September
Now they’re hosting their own shenanigans, over a long weekend, starting with a supper club on Thursday 19 September and culminating with an eclectic knees-up at ‘The Tab’ on Saturday 21. It features Suggs on DJ duties, legendary punk-poet John Cooper Clarke, hard-rocking hoodlums Zodiac Mindwarp and The Love Reaction, BBC wordsmith Murray Lachlan Young, some “plugged-in ukulele wig-outs”, and plenty more besides.
“We’re trying to get back to the spirit of the parties we used to have in Clerkenwell in the Nineties, despite now being in posh Notting Hill,” says Hodgkinson, referring to some salacious little pre-millennial soirées frequented by the likes of artist Nick Reynolds (son of train robber Bruce) and scuzzy Sopranos soundtrackers, Alabama 3 (performing an acoustic set on Saturday 21).
Their posh Notting Hill home does have its advantages for a busy weekend programme, though. “It’s like a little French corner; we can spill out on to the street and not get into too much trouble.”
Other IdlerFest highlights will include Tom and Gavin (authors of the Ukulele Handbook) hosting their Ukulele Player of the Year contest (“like X Factor, with ukes”), KLF prankster Bill Drummond presenting some rare “12-inch versions” of his book, 45, (“There’ll be crayons for you to write comments in the margin, apparently”) and a lazy Sunday to “flop around and have a Bloody Mary”.
The Idler Academy, left, and its founder, Tom Hodgkinson. Photos from The Idler and Stuart Chalmers (Flickr)
An Idle journey
It might not be an exalted half-century, but 20 years is an anniversary worth saluting for such a venture, says Hodgkinson, since peddling mind-broadening philosophies doesn’t immediately endear The Idler to money men.
“We’ve tried to be more rampantly commercial, but our anti-consumerist bent doesn’t really make for a very good business model!” he says.
“But it’s a nice point from which to look back. I started The Idler at 25 and the first four were published in my kitchen, so it’s inevitably reflected my own ageing as it’s gone along.”
In true Idler fashion, Tom entered semi-retirement at 33 and stationed himself in a Devon village. But now, with 50 on the horizon, he is facing that familiar dilemma of whether to relent to the lure of the capital once again. His current plan is to return in the new year with his family and ‘un-semi-retire’.
“I’ve done everything the wrong way round, so at 50 I’ll be hauling myself back into the world with greater gusto.” That’s the spirit, Tom.
And once the festival is out of the way? “I want to do even more with The Idler so, y’know, hopefully another 20 years of unsuccessful underground publishing…”
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The Ukulele Handbook by Tom Hodgkinson and Gavin Pretor-Pinney is published on 12 September by Bloomsbury