The Official Doctor Who Fan Club vol 1, by Keith Miller

In late 1971, 13 year-old Keith Miller from Edinburgh wrote to the BBC to ask about the status of the official Doctor Who fan club, run for the two previous years by Graham Tattersall. Within months, Miller had taken over as secretary and thrown himself into things with great zeal. He soon produced Official Doctor Who Fan Club (ODWFC) pens and badges, a newsletter — the first ever Doctor Who fanzine — and got the popular comic TV Action + Countdown to print his name and address, so that fans across the country could send off for these goodies.

Oh blimey. Then he had to deliver.

It’s an extraordinary story, which I’ve read before, told through contemporary paperwork: the original newsletters and a wealth of correspondence. Miller didn’t keep copies of the letters he himself wrote; what’s here are the replies, mostly from Sarah Newman, secretary to Doctor Who producer Barry Letts. 

Newman was encouraging, warm-hearted and patient, helping where she could by providing addresses of Doctor Who cast and crew he could interview, as well as stencils for Keith to produce the newsletters so that she can then have them duplicated, and reminding him to not let the club get in the way of school work. She’s kind and practical when Keith’s father suddenly dies, having lost her own father when she was around the same age. Newman is also stern when she needs to be, and doesn’t mask her thoughts about some other young, keen fans — famously, including one P. Capaldi. It’s all rather raw and unguarded and sometimes excruciating, but also very moving.

Keith and his newly widowed mum journeyed down to London to visit the studio recording of Carnival of Monsters, Keith telling us in his notes which celeb he stood next to in the urinals of TV Centre. A year later, he was trusted to make the journey on his own to see recording of The Three Doctors; he made the nine-hour journey, visited the studio and then raced for the bus home, all in one very long day. 

There are some very interesting details for my own selfish needs. For example, the first original Target novelisations, Doctor Who and the Auton Invasion and Doctor Who and the Cave-Monsters were scheduled to be published on 17 January 1974 but according to Target editor Richard Henwood here, the widespread shortage of newsprint meant they were delayed for several weeks. The next pair of books, Doctor Who and the Doomsday Weapon and Doctor Who and the Day of the Daleks were then due for publication in March but, according to Keith’s newsletter, delayed until July — which explains the big gap between their scheduled release date and the next books published by Target, that September.

This and other such minutiae help to illuminate the timeline I’ve already built up from other sources, and provides leads for further enquiry. I have much more to say (about the changing running order of stories in production and the actors expected to be in them, about a particular party…), but I’ll save it for my book.

The last letter in here, dated 2 September 1974, is from Ann Burnett, secretary to incoming Doctor Who producer Philip Hinchcliffe. As Keith says in his closing words, there was no goodbye from those he’d been in constant touch for years. How abrupt. How haunting. My sense from the notes is that it still feels raw.