7. Fanzine sellers outside the ground
Deranged Ferret, The Banker and The Yellow Belly all gave supporters somewhere to have their say. You’d look out for the seller on your way into the ground, sometimes just off the club’s patch, and I seem to remember being able to pick up a fanzine off the counter in the Golden Eagle. Some of what we do here on The Stacey West grew out of the same urge to talk about the Imps with other people who cared as much as you did.
Imagine losing 7-1 at Colchester today. Your verdict would be on your phone and out there before you’d left the ground. Back then you’d moan to the people around you, carry on in the pub and, by the time you’d sat down to write it up, you might have heard something that made you change your mind about one or two things. If you still felt strongly enough to put a stamp on the envelope after all that, the editor probably had something worth printing.
Sadly, while some fanzines cling to life, the general market for them has dwindled, and the last DF went out in 2017; the last printed fanzine of any sort (bar Imp Press, which is more of a matchday magazine) was our own Stacey West in 2018/19.
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