This story appeared this week, further proof that “the game’s gone”. It’s like they think that “The only team in the UK to have a Michelin guide recognised offering” matters?! Also, didn’t Charlie Crote play inside forward for Barnsley in 1935? I don’t know, perhaps it does matter so this week we return to the outer reaches of fanzine food.

A Proper Baguette

Back in 2018 Swansea were in the Premier league and JackSwan issue 65 appeared. An interesting fanzine this, 100 pages and distributed free..obviously it was packed full of adverts but well done lads, great initiative.

Food? Well obviously there were plenty of ads for food places to eat before the games and here are my favourite pair, a proper antidote to £900 a head bollocks. Roberts clearly went for the premium ad package having a breakfast review of whole baguette filled with breakfast items, the £2.50 matchday burger meal sounds great plus any place that has faggots and peas on the menu will get my custom. Brownsters Clydach seem to specialise in crempog sandwiches which might be a bit sweet for my tooth but look bloody lovely. Michelin rated my arse.

From Blackpool to Tiverton via booze

Staying in Wales in 2002 Newport fanzine Where’s Jerry? ran their end of year poll/review and came up with no winner for the food and drink category. The pasties at Tiverton seem to have gone down well but the person who voted for Harry Ramsden’s at Blackpool needs to take a long hard look at themselves.

Issue 8 of Cardiff city’s O Blue Bird of Happiness (I just bought a joblot of Welsh fanzines OK?!) carried a quite remarkable and very old story of Len Ashurst in his Sunderland playing days. In the Football League Review in 1969 Len reveals his love for home brew, attending the brewer’s Guild dinner and winning two prizes in the raffle. Len can make a good stout, brown or lager for about 3d a pint but claims to only drink orange juice!

Len was of course Cardiff manager for a second time from 1989 to 1991 and the back cover of the fanzine suggests he wasn’t as methodical or as revered by the time he failed as manager there again.

Fish, nothing more, nothing less

Sunderland stalwart A Love Supreme issue 9 from 1990 carried a number of ads. As I’ve mentioned before these are a great source of social history, the shops, the goods, in some cases the names of shopkeepers around at the time, very useful if you’re trying to trace someone or something from a particular time. Anyway, they carried these ads. I love an that uses the words ‘Quality’ and ‘Discount’ in conjunction because they two things are obviously intelinked.

It’s the ad for M.J Whelan’s fish shop that took my eye for a number of reasons though. None of your fancy chips or peas, not a saveloy in sight, nothing mentioned besides the neccesary. It’s a fish shop. As for an address, why bother, in the days before sat nav we did directions by pubs, ‘carry on until you see the Kings Head on the left, tuen next right. About 2 miles down that road you’ll see the Duck and Drake on the right, great pub but you”ll need to carry on to the Red Lion on the left and its 2nd left after that, we’re half way up on the right’. In this case they were probably paying by the letter so “opp New Derby” was more than enough to guide people there. Finally there is the bit that might have ended up getting ALS in trouble with the powers that be at Roker, the claim that MJ served “Better food than inside the ground and at a better price too!” I mean this was almost certainly true but even so!

As you do I was idly wondering if the ‘New’ Derby and or Whelans were still there so off I trundled to google maps. The results will astound you (or whatever they say when trailing some crap on a podcast nowadays). Thankfully the New Derby is still there and even better it gets great reviews for its food and service, the sort of community pub that we need.

Whelan’s? Well it still serves fish..

Sour Grapes

Chesterfield’s The Crooked Spireite was consistently one of the best fanzines around. Issue 11 from March 1989 provides with us the next “food” piece. It’s a lovely piece of writing describing one fan’s disgust at not just grapes but also TV star Alan Carr’s dad’s approach to football.

It’s telling that a lot of the things mentioned here are still regular bugbears and only now being addressed by FIFA with recent rule changes. It’s also telling that our correspondent talks about entertaining football and teams being sent out “deliberately not to entertain” when it’s clear they have talented footballers available. Never mind Alan Carr’s dad, Jose Mourinho, Pep Guardiola, Mikel Arteta anyone?!

Bottle

The City fan who went viral near the end of last season with the Arsenal bottle really did make an arse of himself didn’t he? Well back in April 1994 issue 2 of Aston Villa fanzine The Villa Bugle ran this cartoon on their back cover…Almost as bad an Alan Hansen utterance, this cartoon is somewhat mystifying given that the previous season Villa themselves “bottled it” losing all of their last three games to hand the title to those lovely lads from Newton Heath by the small matter of 10 points. The fact that this also presaged United going on to have a “little bit of success” for “a couple of years” means this should probably be used in a dictionary under “Don’t poke a bear with a short stick”.

For the record, United led the 1993–94 Premier League for almost all of the season, eventually finishing as champions eight points ahead of runners-up Blackburn Rovers…and won the FA Cup. Well done lads.

Silver Service

Brighton have had 25 (TWENTY FIVE) fanzines over the years. The ever excellent Scars and Stripes ran a series of great illustrations of “Great Football Cliches” on their fanzine and in October 1998 issue 12 ran this one.

Look I know it’s a weak link to food but this is a blog about fanzines, there have been far more tenuous links used to include stuff in many a zine over the years and I just like the joke and the superb illustration. The illustrator Alan Budgen is still around and I’ll probably run a series of his great cliche gags at some point but in the meantime you can see more of his excellent work here. https://budgefunk.com/portfolio-page/

Pasta

I mentioned a couple of week ago the mystery of the Pasta/Pasty nexus in Plymouth fanzines. Low and behold clarity came as I was researching this blog and found the following report of an intra fan club friendly played out between Wycombe and Plymouth fans in The Wanderer, a Wycombe fanzine.

So there you have it, PASTA stands for Plymouth Argyle Supporters Trapped in Avon (yes I know it should be Pastia but just roll with it OK). Turns out Plymouth supporters groups over the years have had a bewildering array of acronyms beginning with P; PACSA (Cornish supporters, PADSA (disabled supporters), PASALB (London supporters) all affiliated to the supporters trust so Pasty and Pasta as fanzines names is the least of the issues you’d face when tracing support for the Pilgrims over the years. (Was it The People’s Front of Judea or the Judean People’s Front?)

The article about pasta is a little dry, perhaps they could have spiced it up by switching Argle for arabiata, making something up about a pennealty, or someone going in the referee’s buccatini (stop this NOW – Ed) but it’s also a happy reminder that outside of a small ignorant core fans and fans groups just care about kicking a ball around and having a bit of fun and fanzines were great providing a link for fan groups (when you weren’t making jokes about neighbours being sheep shaggers)

Germ Warfare

Poetry appeared frequently in fanzines, so much so that it’s almost inevitable that I’ve found a poem about pies. Germ Warfare appeared in issue 70 of Sheffield United’s superlative Flashing Blade in January 2000. Well, I say issue 70 but it was actually the 71st issue but they clearly forgot to change the header inside.

The case against all seater stadia would surely have been strengthened in the early 90s if the argument “you won’t be able to use a pie as a missile any more” had been used. “Industrial gristle in a Swarfega mix” really is more gripping than anything Betjeman ever served up.

The Final Whistle

£900 a head food? Michelin approved? THE GAME’S GONE!

A gallery of covers from some of fanzines referenced in this blog is included below for your Angel Delight.