Far be it for me to suggest that fanzine editors/contributors were “economical with the truth” or not particularly serious sometimes but there is evidence of such traits if you look back at the letter section of, well, almost every fanzine ever printed. So, this week we’ll look back at just a small selection of those letters and analyse some of the claims within..or just laugh at their extraordinary chutzpah.

M is for..

The Lion Roars was an early Millwall fanzine and as you would expect from such a fanbase was”lively” at times. I’m including two letters from issue 6 in December 1988 here because they are prescient, sarcastic and very creative, everything fanzines were.

The first predates Roy Keanes’ prawn sarnie brigade by 12 years and though it is clearly sarcastic is a great example of fanzine content predicting the yuppie future of football (I don’t think Di ever met Terry Hurlock though)

Then there is this simple but effective beauty from Pat in Bexleyheath. Pat was clearly quite the artist, I love the font and slightly sketchy colouring of the blue.

Managerial Vacancies

Your bitter local rivals sack their manager, obviously you seek out the nearest known fan and express your commiserations…or alternatively you could pen a totally made-up piece for your fanzine including him applying for the managers job at Fulham.

This piece appeared in Issue 13 of Brentford’s Beesotted fanzine in March 1992. Dicks had been dismissed with a win rate of 22.7% in December 1991 (a statistic I looked up and that was clearly calculated years later because no one did that stuff then) and Don Mackay,  his replacement didn’t fare much better, eventually leaving after a defeat Leyton Orient of all people.

Anyway, the lack of a copy of the actual letter from the chairman and the story of his brother-in-law spending “the afternoon in Hounslow with a view to purchase a sheepskin jacket” leaves me suspecting this was all just a bit of a jape, two pages filled with rival baiting and being creative with the phrase “Dicks out” The things we used to do before the internet!

In 1993 Chris Manns, editor of Gullible -Gullpost the Torquay fanzine went one further and produced evidence of not only his application but also the signed reply from Graham Kelly, the esteemed Chief Executive of the FA and all round bore.

Chris makes several compelling arguments for his appointment, a team playing a passing game, flair, loyalty to experienced players but you can’t help thinking admitting he was a Torquay supporting student living in Leeds might have counted against him. Along with this total lack of experience of course. Graham gives a very polite and I would say more encouraging reply that might have been needed. Perhaps he had a sense of humour after all.

Psedonymous

Staying in the lower reaches of the league but moving to Mission Impossible (The Torquay one, not the Darlington one to be clear) issue 4 in October of 1990 on page 13 we find a letter of such incredible foresight that we can’t believe it didn’t receive more publicity nationwide. What a truly thoughtful man Ken was.

At this point I remembered that pseudonyms were also commonly used in correspondence to early editions of When Saturday Comes.  So I travelled back to issue WSC 24 and found this fantastic letter.

How did I find this letter with such ease? Well that’s thanks to this letter in WSC 462 from Vasco De Gama of Penge answering correspondence from Harold Wilson of Huddersfield in WSC 461 answering correspondence from “Bill Clinton” re Worcester City in WSC 460.

Looking back at 460 I found the letter from Mr Clinton and a former POTUS himself confirms that pseudonyms did appear in the early editions of WSC (STOP THIS NOW – Ed)

Pen Pals Plus

Then there were the altogether more serious letters, letter about taking pen pals to an altogether unheard of level. This letter appeared in issue 18 of Derby’s Hey Big Spender in 1996 concerning an incredible initiative called the “Football Friendship Club”

It starts out with the eminently sensible and normal idea of the time, a network of pen pals of different clubs. This expands into the idea of lifts/shared transport costs to matches..even if it could be with fans of opposing clubs…OK, still a great idea, let’s run with that.

Then things really begin to escalate as we reach the realm of the stopover, fans across the country being put in touch with ‘hosts’ near the ground of a particularly onerous away trip. For example Newcastle fans visiting Southampton would be offered a bed for the night in exchange for the same for the return game, this being designed to “Promote friendship between rival supporters”

I mean it’s great in principle but without wishing to resort to stereotypes, you can’t help wondering what would have happened if Biffa Bacon had turned up at Rupert Lowe’s house. Actually, the more I think about that the better it sounds. I’m now wondering if this might have been the basis for the TV show Rich House, Poor House as the next level Exchange brings all sorts of scenarios up. A week with a total stranger, the fan of an opposing team? Christ.

Look it is all very well meaning and in some ways very sensible but beyond the idea of pen pals I’m not sure this would be taken up by many, even 30 years ago when arduous coach travel might well have been less comfy than today but was very much more part of the experience of supporting.

As for international pen pals/exchanges…well google translate or a babel fish might have been useful but were unfortunately still decades/galaxies away. School exchange trips were common so I suppose why not amongst “adult” football fans?

I know I’m being a little frivolous and perhaps that is unfair, it was a great idea that perhaps needed a little refining but the principles behind it “To make rival friends more friendly” was a great one and hell, at least they were trying. I can find nothing more about the initiative or if any exchanges happened, if you were involved, please let us know how it panned out.

MP’s Letters (for what they were worth)

Long before Tony Blair claimed to support Newcastle as a child MPs were lying to and saw little point in engaging with or supporting fans. Quite the opposite in fact if they were on the side of the psychopath that was Maggie Thatcher in fact.

Many fanzines wrote to their local MP and encouraged others to do the same. Here are 3 replies published in issue 7 of Gillingham fanzine Brian Moore’s Head Looks Uncannily Like London Planetarium in April 1989.

The first two letters of reply from the right dishonourable Peggy Fenner MP is a classic of its type, blunt, misleading, rude, ignorant and callous. For the second letter she might just have written “read this you oik” on the letter from Diddy Moynihan.

Clubs HAD acted and were still being told that the cost of even a voluntary card scheme would be laid solely at their door[1] so no wonder they resisted. Obviously, any Tory MP worth their salt would also ignore the fact that the police were paid and responsible for control of crowds but had proven time and again they were incompetent and incapable of doing so and…Oh what’s the point.

At least Peggy put a teeny tiny bit of effort into her bullshit. Kent MP Andrew Rowe admitted that he didn’t know if an ID scheme would work but thought it would be prized, like “membership of the AA”?! I know people quite rightly complain about cloth eared MPs not replying today but quite honestly a blank page would have been better than this patronising crap.

Remember these replies were all sent in reply to letters sent before Hillsborough, after which to blue rinse witch and her cronies lied and doubled down on their bullshit. Never forget.

For balance some MPs were trying to be supportive. Here is a letter from a Labour MP Harry Barnes which appeared in many fanzines in March 1990, this version is from issue 13 of Dundee United’s magnificent The Final Hurdle. In this letter he calls for “Soccer fans to have a say in the running of their football clubs” and argues that the growth of football fanzines is “generally a healthy development”. Just ignore the use of generally, it is clearly a mistake.

The letter also quietly marks the fall of the ID scheme just a few months later, a letter from Lord Justice Taylor dated January 1990 saw to that. The following report from the Grundiad from when some papers were worth reading is a beauty. Joe Ashton MP calling the law behind Thatcher’s ID scheme “an ass” is particularly memorable. As an aside look at the astounding timescale. An interim report on the terrible events of 1989 was published in August 1989 and the full report completed in January 1990. Grenfell anyone?

AOB

Letters played an important role in life in the 80s and 90s, not just in fanzines but fanzines record very well just how important and central they were to protest, satire and let’s be honest filling space in our lives pre internet.

You could easily write a whole blog about letters sent by and to Gillingham fanzine Brian Moore’s Head Looks Uncannily Like London Planetarium so it’s only fair that we finish with the reply to a letter they that had sent to Mars Ltd about the removal of Spangles from the market.

Three things here;

1. Mr Chaplin?! (apologies if this was your surname)
2. Spangles stopped in 1984?!
3. Sweets contain “top quality ingredients”.

I’m off down the corner shop!

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[1] https://www.theguardian.com/football/2014/jul/07/football-soccer-id-cards-hooliganism-archive