I saw an advert for the current tour of “Dave Hill’s Slade” the other day (yes, they play it and yes, they stop and the crowd sings it for them..) anyway, this made me think of the way fanzines marked Christmas so here we are..

Quite often fanzines were too busy to cover Christmas what with the club’s terrible run of form or appalling chairman (just about every fanzine ever printed at some stage) or a 4 page review of a match from 1957 (again, many fanzines) or an overview of all the times the club has played Everton (Yes really, a 4 page special appears in The Rangers Historian, Volume 1 issue 4, December 1987 with pictures that are almost good enough for #FloodlightFriday).

Was time and space to mark Christmas limited to the cover? Let’s find out.

Setting the Scene

Billingham Synthonia fanzine (ICI, fertiliser, look at my post on twitter) Journey to the Unknown from December 1992 did this with aplomb. The covers contain not only a Christmas celeb endorsement but snowflakes and a bauble along with the “Don’t buy if you’re easily offended” warning. Festive!

The back cover contains the dubious claim of a super smashing lovely celeb fan and Jim Bowen appears even to have sent them a personal message.

Inside though we do have a little Christmas message mentioning a few names that old fanzine editors will remember fondly plus match officials. They also announce the sponsorship of 3 players!!  Stuff those orphans, it’s the left back’s socks we’re concerned about.

Goodwill to all men?

Heart’s No Idle Talk (NIT) with their ‘Jam Tarts specials’ edition has Christmas 1989 “prominently” displayed on the front cover but there is no further mention of the season anywhere else in the journal unless you count “lots of Anti Souness” or winning a video as being seasonal.

Apparently though there isn’t room in Edinburgh for everyone (There were 25 Hearts 25 fanzines alone over the years!) So our heroes  spend lots of time slagging off other Hearts’ fanzines. They are upset not that fanzines are banned from Tynecastle but that they aren’t getting credit for prompting the ban. This started a lengthy tit for tat slanging match with Gorgie Wave played out by printed correspondence on the pages of the fanzines. Fanzines really were the first Social Media.

As for their views on Hearts Review (HR)..well, hardly getting into the Christmas spirit is it now lads?

 The Review was always focussed on the history of Hearts and for sure was more genteel than some felt a fanzine should be. However, it was always a very well researched and impeccably laid out so to call it crap is a bit harsh. I beg to differ anyway, who wouldn’t want to read about Hearts first championship win in this article that appeared in HR..

Festive Spirits

Let’s subvert the form a little now by having a look at what the Christmas fixtures might do for a fanzine’s mood. Chelsea’s Carefree issue 6 appeared in January 1993. The editor is not in a great frame of mind after Chelsea drew every game in December scoring just 2 goals (it would be March before they won again!) but he knows who to blame.

Hint, the sharpness didn’t return and Chelsea would finish 12^th, below beloved neighbours Tottenham, Arsenal and WAY behind QPR!

Apparently Mick Harford doing a Hitman and Her is to blame. I can find no record of a Luton club owned by him but blaming his goalscoring form on it seems harsh. He had scored 10 goals for Chelsea since August including their first ever Premier League goal. Something was clearly up though as he would score precisely one more goal for them before being sold to Sunderland in March 1993. He only lasted four months on Wearside before a move to Coventry where he made one appearance in a year due to a back injury possibly caused by his dance floor moves? We’ll never know..Anyway, he was Chelsea’s top scorer in the 92-93 season despite his alleged clubbing festivities and being sold ¾ way through the season.

The Full Monty

Rotherham’s Moulin Rouge issue 20 covering the Christmas 97/New Year 98 nexus chose to adorn their cover not with Santa or Baby J but with their idea of what squad members would look like in the film of the year, The Full Monty. A great idea as the film used various locations around the well-known Rotherham suburb, Sheffield.

Issue 20 did also include a cartoon (Black and white, poorly trimmed, a fanzine classic) Christmas card/insert for all readers. I have no idea what event it is parodying but we’ll revert to the seasonal favourite, “It’s the thought that counts”. If anyone can work this out, please get in touch.

The editorial team for Billericay Town’s Cowshed Blues went stark staring crazy with their Christmas “decoration” in their 1992 festive issue by issuing a picture of the editorial team. This is an exceptional photo in many ways, an absolute fanzine classic. Despite the lack of colour the wallpaper really pops and the staging..well you can only assume that the chap in the middle wanted to look like a 12-year-old sandwiched between his older and rather solid looking uncles. All of this paired with Santa and his sleigh, well it’s ‘chef’s kiss’

Copyright? What Copyright?

Bristol Rovers Trumpton Times from December 1992 included a cultural reference that was probably outdated then but for sure is very much a ‘who?’ for today’s generation with this Billy Bunter cartoon whilst imploring its readers to behave over the Christmas period.

They also provided the recipe for a Christmas cocktail, fashioned on the alleged tastes of City’s big money signing Dariusz Dziekanowski. Apparently, he liked a party and has said of his time at Celtic ‘Okay, I wasn’t a priest, but I was not the devil,’ Celtic and priests, a well-established pairing unlike his cocktail.

Jacki is now a councillor for a liberal-centrist political party in a small west midlands town called Warsaw. (With thanks to Walsall fanzine Small Town in Poland for this reengineered joke)

Bored Games?

We mentioned at the beginning that quite often fanzines were too busy berating their favourite chairman and so finally we’ll travel to Leeds. Let’s face it, no Christmas would be complete without a board game to fall out with family and friends about. Leeds’ Hanging Sheep “Crimbo 93” issue 28 promised an Xmas board game and boy did they not live up to that promise.

Fuming at the sale of David Batty to Blackburn, the editorial makes it clear their feelings which have partially had the sting taken out of their venom by the classic fanzine ruse of running up to the print deadline as news broke. Perhaps we should also be upset about this as the board game is hardly filled with festive cheer, there’s not a penguin or a reindeer in sight, its just another way at getting at Leslie Silver understandable as that might be.

Sleighbells ringing

Based on this sleighride through a few Christmas issues of fanzines there wasn’t often much festive cheer around. Chairmen, a terrible run of form or an irrational hatred of someone put paid to that or maybe that overview of all the times your club has played Everton was just burning a hole in your pending tray. Of course we’re being a little unfair here, the December issue of fanzines would be written and out in the days well before it was acceptable to say Merry Christmas from early October onwards, but you can’t help thinking a few fanzines carried the ‘angry from Tunbridge Wells” a bit too far.

However, there was always a lot of brilliant creativity, finding new ways of needling the board, of taking terrible photos, prescient comments about star strikers, taking the mickey out of neighbours, copyright infringement, film tributes and much much more. So even without merry Christmas tidings you have to say fanzines were and still are the gift that just keeps on giving.

Thanks for all your support and feedback on the blogs this year, it has been a blast but there will now be a brief interlude before we come back in the new year with more tales of derring do.