In other blogs we have talked about fanzines and the media personalities that grew from them. In this blog we’ll look at the case of a much bigger fanzine, acknowledged as the first general football fanzine and how they were brought down by a national media “Celeb”

Before we even get to that story did you know that Sir Tim Rice, born in a country house in Buckinghamshire is to this day, a Sunderland fan? Apparently, he liked the way the name sounded, and let’s face it, he knows a tune. Anyway, in another quite incredible twist it turns out that the first general fanzine was backed by Sir Tim who’ll reappear later in the story of the fanzine and its demise.

Quite foul!

1972 is a lifetime ago, over 50 years, so looking through old editions of Foul magazine is slightly disconcerting. Parts of it could be written today and though this is true of many fanzines to come what sets Foul apart is the overall quality and concise, critical nature of the writing..along with typical fanzine fare, spelling mistakes and typing errors  from using a typewriter as this rather priggish review in the Observer commented. BUT, it was the first big circulation general football fanzine on the British Isles!

The fanzine was developed by Cambridge undergraduates but it is remarkable looking in old editions at the names it contained, names who would go on to very successful and famous careers in TV and the print media. The creators alone, Chris Lightbown (A sports writer for The Sunday Times..for 26 years) who collaborated with Andrew Nickolds (Created and wrote Hold The Back Page and Agony, two big BBC and LWT hits in the 80s) are enough  but the rest of the editorial team included Stan Hey who Nikolds worked with on those series and THE Stan Hey who was also to be a writer for the shows Dalziel & Pascoe and Auf Weidersehen, Pet. Rounding out the editorial team was Steve Tongue, now a freelance journalist and author who was football correspondent for The Independent from 2000 to 2013.

Then look at this list of contributors; Alan Stewart, Eamon Dunphy, Derek Dougan, Bill Tidy (You recognise that cartoon in the logo now, don’t you?!), Bill Grundy pre-Sex Pistols fame and Tony Wilson, yes, the Factory records one. Obviously during the fanzine’s run these were not household or well-known names but there is no other fanzine that included so many people who would go on to “make it” in the media.

Not impressive enough? Well, the fanzine was at least partially funded by Sir Tim Rice and his brother Julian…

Halcyon Days

As mentioned, there was some tremendous writing and as with all fanzines moaning about the state of football. They even (sort of) predicted the inception of the Club world cup in this editorial piece in 1972 bemoaning about the length of the ‘Close season’. (For the stattos out there, the shortest close season occurred due to covid, with a compressed schedule meaning only seven days elapsed between the end of the 2019-20 season and the beginning of the 2020-21 season)

I mean it’s clear now with hindsight that the Anglo Italian and Watney cups combined were the blueprint for the dreadful bore fest that ran this summer. Either that or nothing changes!

Foul would also set the tone for items that would later be mimicked many times by fanzines 20 years later. Take this FA Cup final day TV schedule from Foul 8 for example (Turn away now if you are a Leeds fan)

Though accused of being Private Eye for football, Foul was much more, including features like ‘Why Showaddywaddy pulled out of a Southport F.C. fundraiser’ [1] ‘Foul of the Month’ and ‘Clogger of the year’ awards along with great spoofs like ‘Spot The Brawl’ seen here where you were invited to place an X where you thought the next fist would land.

Plus of course cartoons by the great Bill Tidy, this one eulogising Manchester United’s big Jim “If you can’t get the man, get the ball,” Holton, a rampaging character United could perhaps have done with in Cleethorpes last night.

Amazingly Tim Rice’s wiki mentions nothing of his part in this literary endeavour, in fact none of the wikis of any of this cast of stars mentions their involvement in this highly regarded and historic fanzine. Strange, but very fanzine adjacent.

Plans are afoot

So successful was the fanzine that in 1975 plans were drawn up for a compilation of it to be published, plans which would end with unfortunate consequences. Certain comments about hack Mike ‘The Talk of Sport’ Langley were made in a feature “The Foul Press Guide”. Sadly Langley, a man who put his name to a serialisation of Sir Alf Ramsey’s memories of managing England despite not writing a word of it[2], threatened to sue over those comments.

Mike Ticher of When Saturday Comes fame did edit a rather excellent and legally compliant compilation in 1987 and he explains “Rather than face the potentially massive cost of a court case and withdraw the book indefinitely, the editors decided to fall back on the goodwill of their readers… When the book was recalled, they transported all the copies from the warehouse of the New English Library in West London to an empty house in Blackheath, where over 20 volunteers had answered the call and set about snipping the offending paragraph from the book and replacing it… For a week in the middle of that legendary hot summer, nearly 15,000 copies of the book had been amended.”

Foul fell out with the publishers who had also obviously cooled on the idea and they were left with 10,000 unsold copies on their hands. “Tim Rice offered to store the books in his barn, and eventually most of them wound up on the bonfire.” Yes, THAT Tim Rice who had bankrolled the fanzine at its outset.

Happily, I recently came into possession of a rare copy of this compilation and sure enough in the double spread “Foul 1976 Press Guide” there is a neatly clipped space where the offending article about Mike Langley should have been.

Each journalist was rated with symbols for being a ‘Good Writer’ or ‘Hack’, ‘Wit’ or ‘Dimwit’, ‘Boozer’ or ‘Shark’. Apparently, the gist of the deleted piece said that Langley allegedly liked a drink. I mean OK, some people might get spiky about this but on the same page Frank McGhee was described as ‘Mad Frank’ and despite being ranked a good writer also received dimwit and boozer rankings and ‘Should definitely not be allowed near any cutlery in the press room’. To be honest by today’s standards this is all thin gruel and compared to some of the punishment laid out on their pet hate Billy Bremner very mild. The 70s were a different world.

The Final Whistle

Fanzines were an independent voice, without professional editors..or legal counsel. We all regret saying something from time to time, but it had real consequences for many fanzines in the 80s and 90s but also remarkably for the daddy of all the general fanzines, Foul. It’s the biggest case we’ve found of a fanzine laid low by their chosen form of humour and protest but ironically it had little in the way of long-term consequences for the editorial team in particular who all went on to much greater things in the media. Perhaps this unfortunate incident was the bit of good fortune they were looking for..

It’s quite incredible that way before any of the many legal shenanigans that took place during the fanzine explosion of the 80s, the recognised first “General” football fanzine in the British Isles “Foul” fell foul of the law (sorry) and folded because of threatened legal costs. Then again, perhaps the most interesting thing about this case is that it’s said to be the only venture backed by Sir Timothy Rice that he lost money on but I suspect he’d settle for that.

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[1] https://vaultofevil.proboards.com/thread/6936/foul-alternative-football-paper

[2] https://www.sportsjournalists.co.uk/the-giller-memorandum/world-cups-own-goals-for-fifa-and-the-papers/