The Voice of the Fans exhibition that has spawned this blog starts tomorrow, 9th May. So it’s only right that we celebrate a remarkable fanzine event that happened recently, and went totally unremarked at the time!

At the championship game between Middlesbrough and Oxford United on Saturday 29^th March a group of lonely souls stood outside the Riverside stadium and asked people for £2 in exchange for a few sheets of paper.

Little did anyone know that this marked the day on which the long running Middlesbrough fanzine Fly me to the Moon (FMTTM) became the most prolific in print football fanzine we have ever seen with its 655th issue. Stoke City fanzine The Oatcake finally bowed out at 654 appearances a few years ago and FMTTM has been sneaking up since then.

So, in the first of what we hope will be a long series of fanzine questionnaire blogs with past and present fanzine editors, we caught up with the extraordinary force that is Robert Nicholls to ask well, mostly WHY?!

Why did you start your fanzine?

I didn’t start Fly Me To The Moon – I was very lucky in taking over an already established unofficial voice which had already become a matchday tradition when I became editor in the early 1990s.

It was started in 1988 by a group of mates and drinking buddies Gillandi Schmultz, Robbie Boal and Tony Pierre. There was a fanzine boom at the time and they were second to Ayresome Angel in the rush to hit the streets first around Ayresome Park. I recall I was writing articles for lots of different club fanzines at the time around the country, just getting contacts from When Saturday Comes and sticking an article in the post. I never ever heard if any of my efforts had been successful or not.

We were all fuelled by lots of reasons to do fanzines. The official programmes were distant and had become reduced to their lowest ebb, there was hardly anything in them. Supporters only outlet was in a “pink” sports Gazette letters page once a week. There was a real movement and momentum with fanzines and the fan movement at that time, we weren’t all hooligans and we had plenty to say about our game.

Fans in Middlesbrough absolutely lapped up early issues that went from unstapled 4 pages of photocopied type written and cartoon content to a full litho printed booklet within weeks.

What’s the story behind the name?

 In 1986 Middlesbrough FC went into liquidation. We were set deadlines by the Football League and FA and were only a few minutes from midnight away from going out of existence. The team was mainly junior players  marshalled by manager Bruce Rioch and his trusty centre half captain Tony Mowbray and despite having been locked out of their home ground and training ground for much of the summer we somehow got promoted at the first attempt from the old 3^rd Division and then followed that up by winning the play offs to reach the top flight.

It was an incredible achievement on an absolute shoestring. There was a great feeling about the team and the town and manager Bruce Rioch proclaimed if he should happen to need to go to the moon then he would want to take his captain fantastic, Tony Mowbray on that lunar trip. So, the fanzine took the quote as a starting point and looked to the Sinatra song to take us to the stars. 

What was the most important thing to the fanzine and its team at the time? (humour, camaraderie, the need for a voice?) 

All those elements you know. Initially it was just the voice of the gang that had put it together but immediately people started writing letters, submitting articles, drawing cartoons. Boro fans wanted to have a say, people wanted to make other fans laugh and the fact it took off so well showed that everyone was singing from the same Sinatra song sheet.

I should say the demand was such that the fanzine started to be published pretty much every home game. It became a full-time job, largely because of none of us were great typists or had a good typewriter so it took a long time of tapping one finger at a time to convert biro written letters into typed content. I had a little canon typewriter I used for music fanzines and could submit copy on fax paper that could be printed and I made contributions like that. I also had friends with an early desk top publisher set up so we would all work at it together,

Friday nights could involve going to a local night club and coming back to the printers and although somewhat blurry eyed and worse for wear starting to compile pages of fanzines before passing them under the ranks of long armed staplers before the sellers arrived bright eyed on a Saturday morning.

What was your favourite article/campaign?

Oh a great many favourites over the years. I still love Roofus the Boro Dog a cartoon strip that has managed to stay on the ball and off the ball for over 35 years.

Donkeywatch was a long running rubbishing of opposition players but with humour rather than malice to such an extent that it was signed up for a national paper at one point. Like Football Unfocussed that pokes fun at local and (inter)national football issues it is a column that has had several stewards, just like me with taking over the fanzine editorship. But the surreal states of Unpleasant Feelings in the Bath could only ever have been written by someone called Uncle Harry. No other mind could wrap up such a unique piece of zany writing in a metaphorical ball of hairy string.

What sort of criticism did you get/ what’s the oddest complaint you ever had?

It could be problematic selling around grounds like Blackburn or at Old Trafford. Not on our land. But I recall once a club official in a blazer marching me from Grimsby Town’s Blundell Park along a street of suburban houses and pointing to a spot on the corner about 200 yards from the stadium. “You can sell here.” I could just about see the top of the Findus family stand from my selling position in neighbouring Cleethorpes. Actually, to be geographically accurate, Blundell Park is in Cleethorpes I was now back across the boundary in Grimsby!

What is your funniest recollection?

Ooh. There have been a few. We used to paste up the A5 pages onto big A3 sheets for the printers and once we pasted them in the wrong order. The result was the fanzine was printed completely back to front.

Still going? How have you persevered for so long?

It becomes a bit of an obsession. I’ve started so am going to finish the next issue. My life can become a bit of a shambles away from the fanzine deadline and as a team we are all just driven to produce the next issue. Over the years so many of us have become friends through doing the fanzine and I get to meet so many nice, friendly people when I am selling at the match. Even if they don’t buy we’re passing acquaintances as they walk past but there is always the briefest of pauses, a wave and a smile.”2-1 today.”

What role do you see fanzines as having today?

They are so much more personal and tactile than a fan web page. Somehow there is a real connection there between the fan writing their page with me lightly editing. I don’t like to change stuff if I can help it and then a team of us put them in envelopes or sell it in the street, a direct line, very human, no AI and a cottage industry feel. Yep a connection. I love the fact that we are all a community. It is a rare and precious thing these days. And we all have real fun from it.

Do you still have old copies in the loft somewhere? Go on, admit it.!

I have an office, a garage and a room in my house full of boxes and boxes and yet I still do not have a complete set. I have a terrible habit of tidying things into boxes, labelling them and then binning the wrong boxes. I once threw out 10 years of fanzines in under 10 minutes. I am a nightmare near a skip I panic and get everything mixed up.

How many times a week did you get asked “Is that the programme mate?”

lol. After 655 issues and well over 35 years I still get asked. I have been standing in the same place selling it through the entire near 30 years history of the Riverside Stadium. Last match I redirected several people.. No this is the fanzine. The programme is on sale over there… maybe the day when no one gets mixed up the mission will be complete. We’ll be at the moon and the journey will be over. Until then…