John Williams

Stand By Your Fan

The Official Doctor Who Fan Club Volume One by Keith Miller

Some things are almost too lovely to be written about. On the face of it, The Official Doctor Who Fan Club Volume 1 is a rather pricey book full of facsimiles of BBC correspondence and photocopies of badly printed newsletters that were unreadable then and now look older than the ancient scrolls of Gallifrey. In fact, not only is it fascinating at a factual level, full of contemporary insights into how the series was made and received, but it’s also a remarkably funny and warm book that tells Keith Miller’s story as he moved between his life as a teenager in a poor part of Edinburgh, and the self-imposed role of co-ordinator of the official fan club which involved at one point almost daily contact with the Doctor Who production office.

Fandom and its relationship with Doctor Who is already a burgeoning academic field and books by Matt Hills and Miles Booy are surely only the first of many more to come. The series has been running so long now that the reputational waxing and waning of eras and the corresponding revisionism of different generations of fans is worthy of examination, especially as natural milestones such as the 50th anniversary and the final DVD release of the original series approach. It’s all very interesting stuff, but necessarily takes you away from the reason people became fans in the first place, which was the emotional pull of both the series itself and the need to share your enthusiasm with like-minded others.

Miller’s book takes you to a time before DWAS, before arsey pieces about The Deadly Assassin, before fandom had a “view”, even before the word “classic” had taken its dread hold on fan vocabulary. In the beginning, as demonstrated in the reprinted newsletters, it was just Keith retelling the old stories in his inimitable fashion, alongside Doctor Who quizzes, crosswords and competitions.

It’s certainly true that even in this prelapsarian era the serpent was out and about. As far as Keith is concerned (and of course this is his story – not an impartial view) the forces of darkness are represented by, rather wonderfully, a young Peter Capaldi and another devout Pertwee fan called Stuart Mooney. Both try to wrest the fan club from Keith, and it’s hard not to think of them as Malcolm Tucker and his underling Jamie from The Thick of It, scheming deviously only to be confounded by the mild-mannered Miller who has the ear of the production office.

And it’s this aspect of the book that I particularly loved. Once Barry Letts had decided to put his trust in Keith, he remained steadfast, an unswerving loyalty conveyed by the other star of this book, Sarah Newman, Letts’ production secretary. The relationship that blossoms between Newman and Miller is terrific, and her conscientiousness does her so much credit, particularly in the way she encourages Keith about his O Levels, consoles him after his father’s death and protects him from Capaldi and Mooney’s frequent power plays. My favourite moment though is when she responds to Keith’s wonderfully fannish query “Are you related to Sydney Newman?” with a heartfelt “No I’m not – thank God!”

There are many other great things about the book including a touching newsletter message from Roger Delgado; a lovely cameo in the BBC canteen from John “Last of the Summer Wine” Comer; Keith’s long-savoured revenge on a Polystyle editor; and the unexpected attraction of Keith’s mum to Barry Letts. For those seeking information about the show itself there are descriptions of Keith’s set visits to Carnival of Monsters, The Three Doctors and Planet of the Spiders as they appeared in the fan club newsletter, alongside the slightly franker versions as he recollects them now. These are all fascinating for the glimpses they provide of the productions and well-known characters such as Letts, Dicks, Manning and Sladen. Jon Pertwee obviously looms large, although sadly his reputation for overweening self-absorption is only further expanded here when it’s revealed that he even intervened on the production of screen-printed fan newsletters when he thought he wasn’t featured prominently enough.

Students of Who fandom will find enough in this book to keep them going for ages, and when it is read alongside the features on organised fandom in issues 9-12 of that excellent fanzine The Frame it helps to provide as full a history of the pre-DWAS era as anyone could have reasonably expected. As such Keith Miller has performed a valuable service to future Who scholars, but this is only the first volume, and the soon-to-be-published second promises more insights as the production team changes and the Philip Hinchcliffe era begins.

My only caveat about the book is that some tantalising threads are left dangling that will not be picked up in the second volume. This is particularly true of Sarah Newman, who is such an important and likeable character throughout that an update on her whereabouts and subsequent life seems an important omission. Fortunately, I understand that Newman has been tracked down by enterprising Who sleuths and that someone is talking to her about her time on the series including the correspondence with Keith. If that’s the case, then it’s just one of the many positive aspects of the publication of this highly enjoyable and touching volume.

The Official Doctor Who Fan Club Volume One is available from here.

Happy Happy Joy Joy

Again this is an entertaining listen, although Cartmel and Curry do occasionally get just the tiniest bit self-regarding. I’m genuinely not joking that in the space of just a few minutes they relate The Happiness Patrol not only to the work of Jonathan Swift, but also to the Chilean disappeared, the Argentinian disappeared, the Arab Spring, the Syrian Uprising and the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission.

Do You Believe in Rock and Roll?

Bongo epitomises the difference between Animal Kwackers and the superficially similar The Banana Splits Show. He resembles Drooper (even though Drooper was supposed to be a lion), but where Drooper was a blissed out hipster in a psychedelic universe, Bongo has the whispering menace of an escaped serial killer. If Drooper is Woodstock, then Bongo is most definitely Altamont.

Specialist Subject

Turn Left: An Unofficial & Unauthorised Guide to Doctor Who Road Signs by Andy X. Cable

If you’ve ever been to an ‘old school’ Doctor Who convention you will have noticed that besides yourself (obviously a well-balanced individual) the attendees are an odd mix. There are sharply dressed media types who take a post-modern ironic approach to the proceedings brushing up against the Cosplay contingent who intensely discuss latex and the problems of crocheting Foamasi outfits – all shepherded around by harried organisers reeking of last night’s gin. But set apart from these cliques are an assortment of others. They are not so much a group as a type and they work alone like contract killers or piano tuners. Paul McGann was once at a convention and when asked if he watched Doctor Who as a child he replied that he was a casual viewer but “you know I wasn’t a specialist.” These fans are the specialists.

Their uniform usually consists of functional clothing and an ever present carrier bag held at arm’s length as if it contains something precious like a packed lunch or the severed head of Peter Davison. Most of them can talk, but there is not much in the way of casual chit chat to be had, although you might be lucky and favoured with an intense diatribe on the weaknesses of Gerry Davis’s original script for Revenge of the Cybermen. The specialists are at their most animated during Doctor Who interview panels when they submit actors to either excessively detailed questions about the life and motivations of a fictional character they played 40 years ago, or aggressive interrogation about subjects the actor could know nothing about such as the salary of the Production Unit Manager or the type of biscuits favoured by the director’s sister.

Andy X. Cable (the X is for Xoanon) is very much a specialist. He lives with his mother and thinks about Doctor Who an awful lot, and although he loves it he is also very exercised by bits of the programme that he doesn’t like such as the Graham Williams’ era and the excessive amount of kissing in the new series. Andy also gets himself into trouble because he lacks social skills and recently caused a bit of a rumpus with a website that detailed his collection of intimate items associated with Doctor Who companions. In Turn Left, he has turned to safer ground and created a list of genuine British road signs that remind him of Doctor Who. It’s safe to say that Andy makes some connections that would be missed by others.

So for Andy, Spider Lane has a vivid impact: “I was once helping mum with her shopping in Tesco and I picked up a cantaloupe which was heavier than I thought and I dropped it and it broke open on the floor. Do you know what crawled out? I don’t because I ran away screaming as the memory of the Fourth Doctor story written by fan policeman Andrew Smith was still ringing in my brain when spiders crawled out of fruit when it got foggy.” Lavinia Close on the other hand has a more succinct entry: “Sarah Jane Smith has an Aunt Lavinia. I have nothing else to say about this.”

Andy ploughs on through a vast collection of signs, dispensing much wisdom on the way “To be really popular in Doctor Who you must be metal and you’re not allowed to have any legs” as well as bracing views on favourite stories: “The Bok! He was really cross all the time and I’m not surprised, he only did one story and it was rubbish” and revealing moments when he took the show’s lessons a little too literally: “If you drill down far enough into the earth you can get some green stuff which will turn you into a really hot werewolf. I tried this once when I was at school.”

Fascinating and plentiful though Andy’s views are, we get to learn a lot more about him than he probably intended. His awkward relationship with his mum looms large, as do his even more problematic interactions with the local community who on occasion chase him like an angry mob. As Andy thinks about Doctor Who all the time he finds it difficult to concentrate on things like lunch hours which leads to inevitable trouble with Karen his evil boss, but he also gradually starts to make friends and even develops something approaching a relationship despite all of his obvious problems.

In addition, the book demonstrates Andy’s consummate skill at drawing with biros and Turn Left is beautifully illustrated by many examples of his insane art. The renderings of Dudley Simpson “Getting Livid As He Thinks About Computers” and Eric Saward “Crying Because His Job Is Too Much Like Hard Work” were my particular favourites, although the one on page 145 drawn with his mum’s favorite pen is genuinely touching.

Turn Left is a wonderful read – it’s funny, sad and sensitively written and if Andy X. Cable weren’t real (he must be, the book has a Facebook page and everything) then he’d go down as one of the great comedy characters of recent years. The best tribute I can pay is that the stream of consciousness style is reminiscent of Roddy Doyle’s Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha – the reader gets right inside Andy’s mind to the point where he becomes not an object of ridicule, but a sympathetic figure who you can’t help but care about. This is due not only to good writing, but to the fact that most of us Doctor Who fans have a touch of the specialist in them somewhere.

Miwk Publishing is a relatively new company who are worth keeping an eye on. As well as Turn Left they have already released the spoof Blake’s 7 guide Maximum Power, Andy Davidson’s incredibly comprehensive Carry on Confidential and the forthcoming Doomwatch tome by Michael Seely also looks very tasty. I should declare an interest and say that I know the people behind the company, and yet despite that am still willing to recommend their output. But I do feel honour bound to point out that other independent publishing houses that publish Doctor Who books are available, and it just so happens that a very informative piece about some of them is available courtesy of Starburst Magazine.

Turn Left is published by Miwk Publishing Ltd.

Voyage and Land of the Giants Competition

Win Complete DVD Box Sets of Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea and Land of the Giants

Thanks to Revelation Films we’re pleased to offer you the chance to win these complete series. Read more