Not The View is a great fanzine name, a pun but a clear and concise one, instantly recognisable to fans as it is clearly not the official Celtic mouthpiece of the time, The View. Issue 23 appeared in October 1990 as Celtic were enjoying a turbulent start to the season. It would improve but they would still end up trophyless and cost Billy McNeill his job.

The front and back covers for many years followed the same recognizable pattern with a caption joke on the front cover and a “Friendly Moments” or “Great Haircut” on the back cover (A haircuts blog is under development!). Neat logo, club colours and some great creativity. Perfect.

The editorial is reasoned if downbeat and an accompanying piece bemoans the poor starts of key signings John Collins (drifting out of games, not great for a £1m player), Charlie Nicholas (injured but £450k sounds like a snip despite this being the start of the end for CN) and..erm Martin Hayes, a £650,000 signing who has been dropped after a couple of games. He would stay at Celtic for 3 years but only play 7 times. This nicely sets the tone for what is to come

There is an article called Scouts Honour which has my head spinning a bit…It’s about twin brothers Michael and Hugh Mills who have signed for Celtic. The first identical twins for the club and indeed ANY Scottish club. I went to the inestimable Celtic Wiki to look them up (https://www.thecelticwiki.com/players/all-time-a-to-z-of-celtic-players/m/) but there is no mention made of them…back to the piece and it turns out they were only 13 so had been signed on schoolboy forms with Rangers and Tottenham apparently after them as well. Unfortunately they clearly never made it but that’s perhaps not surprising with the attitude of the Celtic chief scout who only put them on in a trial match because he felt sorry for them. Their actual height isn’t mentioned but 13, 1990s and of Glaswegian heritage…christ they must have been small for this to have been mentioned. In 1990 teams weren’t stacked with giants unlike the world cup this year where Bosnia and Norway topped the charts with an average height of 187.4cm (just under 6’2″ AVERAGE height!!)

There is news that fans aren’t happy with the ID card plans being dropped, a movement now starting to get all seater stadia removed from the agenda with a petition..remember when they had an impact?! This is on the same page as news that would eventually lead to protests, 35 years later when Lawwell stepped down as non-exec Chairman in 2025 citing citing “abuse and threats”. In retrospect I prefer petitions.

Think conspiracy theories about biased referees are new? Pshaw, fanzines were doing the staple pieces of billions of worthless podcasts decades ago. I’ve read this article a couple times and whilst I have to applaud the work involved it’s hardly conclusive and tbh borderline invalid “The figure ignores penalty claims turned down turned down which most fans would acknowledge Rangers benefit more from than any other team.” is my favourite line, absolute belter that. Great fanzine article though, I wouldn’t be without stuff like this, it portrays passionate endeavour and must have taken some time pre excel and databases. FYI The Dryborough and Anglo Scottish cups will feature in a forgotten tournaments in fanzines piece sometime.

As an addendum to the letters the zine also ran a lookalikes section. The Souness one is bloody superb.

The early editions I have of Not The View are superb and I’m pleased to report that it is STILL a great print fanzine, issue 314 available now here https://ntvcelticfanzine.com/2026/03/18/ntv-314/ from their superb website with JB Banal and co still producing top quality work.

There is a lot more in issue 23 that I could include but we’re already at 700+ words and this is supposed to be a mini blog. What’s everywhere is excellent and even serious articles are dripping in sarcasm, this is just my thing. Though inevitably sometimes a bit focussed on ‘beloved neighbours’ it always seems to be trying to be balanced and did have some great regular features in haircuts and superb cartoons for example plus with contributor names like Ross Mangles, Marmaduke Baglehole and JB Banal you know sarcasm isn’t far away (I hope Ross wasn’t a real person).

Basically it gave a humorous fans eye view of matches, rivals, the manager and team, the clubs utterings and news, all in a rounded and well produced way. What more could you ask from a fanzine!?