DISPATCH 10

I want to start this Dispatch by taking a moment to thank everyone who supported CLOBBER in 2025. Whether you bought our gear, read one of our Dispatches, or quietly followed along, I appreciate you. Since launching in March, these past ten months have been filled with special moments, mistakes and hard-earned lessons. There have been highs and there have been lows, but I believe all of it has been necessary in laying the foundations for the year ahead. The brands we choose to support become part of our daily lives, and say something about who we are. Knowing that CLOBBER has found a place in your routines and your stories means more to me than I can put into words.

In 2026, we'll be adding to the CLOBBER line-up with our take on familiar training staples. Each product will sit naturally alongside those that came before it, allowing pieces to be worn together in different combinations. Beyond the product, we'll be looking for ways to connect with and support those who share our appreciation for human movement and well-made clothes. These Dispatches will continue to serve as a record of our journey, and the people, places and ideas that shape us along the way.

With all my love, Joe for CLOBBER

To many punters, Ronnie O’Sullivan is snooker’s greatest. Turning pro at 16, he’s been at the sport’s summit for more than three decades. But his career hasn’t been a clean narrative of success. Alongside the brilliance came chaos. Addiction, depression and periods of withdrawal from the game altogether. In the early 2000s, O’Sullivan stepped away from the table during a period when his life and snooker career were in turmoil. In need of an outlet that would give him structure, clarity and control, running became his salvation. He joined Woodford Green Athletics Club in Essex and began lining up for road and cross-country races.

By 2008, at 32, O'Sullivan was running a 10km in about 34:54 and held a 5km time of 17:04. Quick. Really quick. But for Ronnie, it wasn't about the numbers. Running gave him a way to reset, manage stress and find balance outside the intensity and high stakes of snooker. In interviews and his book, he's described running as "my religion, my belief system," a replacement for the destructive habits of his past and a source of stability when life, and snooker, felt out of control.

O'Sullivan's book Running: The Autobiography is less a sports memoir than a meditation on movement as medicine. It reminds us that the simple act of putting one foot in front of the other can restore order in a fractured world.

Winter training always looks a little different. Short days and long nights mean that most sessions are done in the dark. The familiar faces from autumn disappear until spring. More time alone. Workouts become transactional. It's about getting the work done, hitting the numbers and moving on to the next one. But now and again, it's great to train with friends. It becomes about moving together. Not faster, not heavier, just together. On this occasion, I stuck around after-hours on a rainy Sunday evening in December to train with Harrison, who runs Surrey-based gym LOCKER with his brother and friend of ours, George. 

Harrison scribbled a workout on the whiteboard. Four back-to-back hypertrophy clusters, each made up of three movements of 10-15 reps each. The first was push-focused. The second pull-focused. The third and fourth were a mixture, intended to exhaust the shoulders and arms. Harrison picked the weights and I focused on keeping up. Pain is the price you pay for getting to train with people fitter and stronger than you. We settled into an unspoken rhythm - one of us working while the other rested. I've always found there to be something serene about training in an empty gym. The usual noise drops away and it's just your body moving in this big empty space, shut off from the outside world. It's bliss. 

When the workout was done and the whiteboard cleared, I took a few photos, layered up and went back out into the rain. Harrison stayed behind, resetting the gym for whoever would walk through the doors at the start of a new week.

One of my earliest music memories is listening to the Gorillaz album, Demon Days. I was 10 at the time and I had this clunky Panasonic CD player in my room that I'd listen to it on. I removed the CD booklet from its case and blue-tacked it to my wall, along with the covers of my other favourite albums. As a kid that loved drawing, the Gorillaz characters fascinated me. I remember redrawing 2-D, the first band memeber that Hewlett created to represent the "pretty boy singer" that he found to be in many bands at the time. The characters and the music both had this rebellious, dystopian feel to them that made me feel cool. I had no idea that Hewlett, the artist behind the creations, was born and raised in a town called Horsham, about 45 minutes away from my bedroom.

In the late 90s, Hewlett was living with Damon Albarn, Blur's frontman, in a flat in West London. They were watching a lot of MTV and became fed up with the same interchangeable faces and shallow music. Hewlett proposed a band with no "real" visible members. Albarn would create great music and Hewlett would build an entire fictional universe around the band members, in the style of his Tank Girl illustrations. At a time when the internet and digital culture were taking off, the brainchild of Hewlett and Albarn struck a different chord. The Gorillaz redefined what a band could be by blending music, animation and storytelling in a way that hadn't been done before. Hewlett's Gorillaz have grown with the times, from ink-and-marker sketches to digital animation and immersive shows, but they've never lost the grit, humour and edge that made them iconic 25 years ago. 

Down the road from where Hewlett and Albarn lived together in Notting Hill, is Acre, a casual restaurant and deli from chef Thomas Straker that opened this summer. We ate there at the back end of 2025 and here's what we thought.

We kicked off with Acre's take on prawn toast. Imagine little arancini-like balls, coated in sesame seeds, delivering all the flavours of the Chinese takeaway classic. For mains, we went for the chilli cheese smash burger. Too often, restaurants miss the mark when it comes to burgers. The patties are too thick, the bun is dry and the sauce situation is off which can make the experience hard work for the jaw. For that reason, we're a big fan of smash burgers and the guys at Acre haven't missed with their chilli cheese edition. The double meat-cheese stack packs a rich, fatty punch. On the extracurriculars, the patties are topped with soft, caramelised chillies and a chunky spicy mayo, giving a hit of heat that's tempered by a lingering creaminess. The lightly charred bun soaks up all the goodness from inside as you bite into it. A couple of tips before getting down to business with this burger: 1) Don't sleep on the gherkins - pop the top and get those bad boys inside; 2) Get a good hold and don't put it down once you start. For dessert, the chocolate mousse was as rich as it gets, heavy with the taste of dark chocolate, olive oil and sea salt - hard to go wrong really. Pud number two was a warm bread and butter pudding, rolled in cinnamon sugar and served with vanilla ice cream - crisp on the outside with a custard-soft middle. Phwoar.

Acre is serving up the kind of grub that you just want to get stuck into. Nothing too pretentious - well-known dishes, re-created with high-quality ingredients and no shortage of flavour. With a couple of drinks, it cost us £120 for two people.