 | About Foul : Football's Alternative Paper
See below for the history of this magazine
Foul: Football's Alternative Paper
This publication was very influential and ahead of its time, copies are rare and very hard to find, it was nearly 10 years after Foul ceased publication a new wave of football fanzines commenced publishing after the Heysel and Bradford disasters. And this is the template for "When Saturday Comes", which would not arrive until 1986, fourteen years after "Foul".
It started off priced at 10p and went up to 20p from issue 31.
Foul was a football fanzine that was first published in the United Kingdom in October 1972 by Cambridge University students. When reading it is very clear that it inspired by Private Eye and is regarded as being the first recognisable football fanzine. 34 issues were published between 1972 and 1976.
The number 30 June 1975 edition was trailed as the last ever edition and is featured in the above image.
There was a gap and a relaunch -not sure of the date on issue 31 but issue 32 was in April 1976 and issue 34 was not till October 1976 so they were having problems.
A letter enclosed in issue 26 offered the chance for people to sell Foul for commission. You sell them at 10p and you make 2 and half pence commission. Any unsold can be returned for a full refund. "Outside a First Division before a match we have found that it is easy to sell at least 3 dozen copies of Foul in an hour, which would make 90p which gets you into the match and gives you enough for a hamburger at half time."
The three founders were Stan Hey, Andrew Nickolds and Steve Tongue .
In the May 1975 they listed :
Editors: Steve Tongue, Alan Stewart
Cartoon : Bill Tidy
Foul's Press Box : Andrew Nickolds (Ed)
Foul Award , Fiar play: Stan Hey
They launched it from Cambridge while they were students there in 1972.
Chris Lightbown- who became a sports writer for The Sunday Times for 26 years.
Stan Hey- has written dozens of hours of television for shows such as Dalziel & Pascoe and eight episodes of Auf Weidersehen, Pet. Along with Andrew Nickolds, Stan created and wrote the comedy shows Hold The Back Page and Agony for the BBC and LWT respectively.
Steve Tongue - is a Football Correspondent for The Independent.
Andrew Nickolds
Click on the magazine cover above to search for Foul magazines.
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