Life in the DWAS Lane! part two

 “My Favourite Waste of Time”

1985-86 was definitely a period when DWAS or Doctor Who related stuff was taking up all of my spare time. July 1985 was probably the most extreme example and because people used diaries then I can relate what I did. Having already been to the Fan Aid event at the end of June, the next week  I went to our local Merseyside local group meeting, a week after that I was at LogiCon hosted by the Solihull local group the same day as Live Aid. I’m sure they asked Bob to move his event, but it wasn’t happening. We couldn’t compete with Queen, Paul McCartney, Wham and co but I did end up on stage interviewing Graham Williams, Ian Marter and Richard Gregory. This wasn’t planned, in fact Paul Vanezis asked me the evening beforehand even though probably anyone else there was more suited. Back then of course with no prep and no Google, I had to rely on my tragically vast knowledge of Doctor Who related facts and wing it when it came to the rest of their careers.

Anyway, I muddled through and now that embarrassing clips have turned up on two recent Collection films I think I was ok, maybe not projecting enough. For the record I have never done any on stage interviewing before or since but I’m kind of glad I did it. I’ll tell you though, the one person who seemed less comfortable going on stage than me was Graham Williams whose suggestion we have ` a couple of pints` beforehand (this was lunchtime) did indeed help the interview go more smoothly.

Two weeks later was PanoptiCon in Brighton, which had been booked into the impressive Metropole hotel on Brighton’s seafront with a budget based on a thousand people attending.  Conventions generally operated on the principal of breaking even which meant that you had to predict how many attendees you might get and as no DWAS convention ever had as many as a thousand attendees it didn’t make financial sense. Our accountant actually advised us to cancel but it was too late for that.

In the end the event went ahead perhaps because the cost of cancelling it or scaling it down would outweigh the cost of carrying on and it was a big success for the attendees. One of the main attractions was the only DWAS convention appearance of Patrick Troughton albeit remaining in character the whole time.  He was fantastic though, one of the few on stage events I saw due to all the drama occurring elsewhere. Behind the scenes things were bubbling over. Clashes occurred notably between David Saunders and Paul's deputy, Steve Pugsley. Paul Zeus didn’t arrive late on Friday whereupon we found out a lot of the stewards were school kids who were far too young to do the job yet had been given free accommodation at the hotel. For an event already leaking money this was not a good look. Talking of leaking I was looking after the dealer’s room, which had a leaking roof and we had to carry all the tables up two flights of stairs as well.

Amongst other stuff going on was some costumes made with DWAS money being taken but never returned to ·the society and actually being used by another group. A year later, they offered to hire them to us! The weekend was buzzing with reports that a local cinema manager had two missing episodes and had been loitering in the hotel reception trying to sell them. There was also an exclusive Twiglet party, I missed it to stay with other people who were strictly not allowed in. Twiglets it seemed enjoyed some status back in the Eighties.

Unfortunately, I did have to attend a midnight Exec meeting, called on the Saturday to decide whether or not Ian Levine should be allowed to get up on stage and declare that when the next season did come back it would only be fourteen episodes long. This actually turned out to be the case but at the time none of us believed him and it also hadn’t been confirmed by the BBC so we voted that he shouldn't, whereupon David Saunders went up on stage on the Sunday and delivered the announcement anyway. He was due to leave soon afterwards having decided to vacate the Co-ordinator’s job after five years. I was told later the event lost around two thousand pounds. Maybe some of that was the cost of those twiglets…

 “New Blood”

One of the many people several of us met at PanoptiCon  was Tony Jordan, who was in two minds as to whether or not to apply for the soon to be vacant Co-ordinator's job. After talking to more or less the whole current Exec at the event he applied and got the job from September 1985. Another significant moment soon after was the departure of Paul Zeus. As Gordon Roxburgh had intimated he was going to do his own events unless the Exec acted at the September meeting it was clearly make or break for Paul. He wasn’t helped by Steve Pugsley who’d written an in-depth behind the scenes piece for DWB (the enemy!) which got him sacked as we were not supposed to be even reading DWB never mind contributing. Paul was annoyed by this development and, despite our requesting he stay, stormed out of the meeting and of course you can guess what happened then. He was voted off and Gordon voted in.

Meanwhile earlier in the year my idea of taking Socials around the UK, using LG's to host them had been accepted which seemed like something to make that “official” tag worth something. For co-ordination reasons and due to its success running its own convention in late 1984, my own LG on Merseyside was chosen as the pilot for the scheme. I had also informally gained expressions of interest from several other groups willing to volunteer to do future ones. A new dawn? Are you sensing a however…

However; a couple of members of the Merseyside LG sent copies of a year old internal newsletter to the production office under the guise of an “irate parent”. The newsletter contained a shocking `joke` and once inside the BBC it was brought to the attention of John Nathan-Turner and Colin Baker who were understandably appalled. Having been scheduled to attend the event they now said they would not do so if it were held in Liverpool and that other potential guests would be dissuaded from attending. Didn’t it count that I’d saved them from the hurricane by keeping those doors closed?! Seriously, this left no choice but to cancel the event. A lesser known fact is that the people who sent this newsletter to the BBC were also the ones who had actually written the offensive material in the first place which tells you what sort of people they were. Unfortunately, this put the lid on any future DWAS events being run by local groups though much of what would have been DWAS Social 6 became the MLG;s own MonsterCon event, the first of several high profile events they would stage.

Several other groups had also started to run events and more were producing quality fanzines. It was becoming clear to me that there wasn't enough space in the monthly CT column to do all this activity justice and what groups really needed was their own vehicle. I hit on the idea of the Local Group Circular, a newsletter which would be paid for by the DWAS and circulated free to organisers who could then spread the information in it - I felt it would also help the LG network as a whole improve communication. The Circular was launched in March 1986 and I opted to expand the department by appointing an assistant, Nick Pegg, then Nottingham LG leader and future Dalek operator (though I had already climbed into a real Dalek the previous year on a set visit!) Once groups got the idea, it became an established facet of the network. Also on the cards was an inter-LG quiz entitled The  Megaquiz. This sort of idea had been in the planning stage for a while, but an earlier attempt to launch a 5-a-side soccer competition had flopped due to the fact that Doctor Who fans as a rule don't seem to like football. The Megaquiz was conducted via the circular and the final would take place at Panopticon. 

CT editor was probably the hardest Exec job after conventions as the editor had to walk a fine line between providing news but not information that was going to spoiler forthcoming stories or events while steering clear of gossip, keeping the production office happy as well as fending off DWB’s endless tirades. Its interesting that the early CTs of the late 70s were very much focussed on the editor’s interpretation of events and sometimes the likes of Gordon Blows would run opinionated pieces on the front page. Fast forward to my era and the merest hint of an opinion other than how wonderful everything was would rile either John Nathan Turner or else Gary Leigh. One example was Dominic May’s reporting of DWASocial 5 and Ian Levine’s speech which labelled it like a Nazi rally. This overstepped the mark as far as JNT was concerned but not for the reason you think. No, he was upset because the article floated the idea that he might be wrong about something! Later I recall Neil Hutchings telling me how he disliked the monthly meeting that the editor would have with JNT and how parsimonious the producer was as to what could be printed as opposed to what he actually told him.

“A Different Corner”

In mid 1986 the Society held Early Days, a smaller scale day- long event which I recall being located in an especially oppressive atmosphere as it was about the hottest day of the year and the venue lacked any air conditioning. A few months later PanoptiCon took the DWAS back to Imperial College, where some of its founders had first started the Society just over a decade earlier and we all stayed in student rooms which were basic but all you needed really. The Megaquiz final didn't quite get the audience it deserved, but concluded with a massive dousing of the contestants and host in silly string!  It was here that I was intercepted by members of the Manchester local group in the bar and would attend several of their meetings after this. There were definitely some groups whose members I got to know quite well; including Manchester but also West Midlands, Nottingham and later on East Kent. I even went with the Nottingham group on that traditional fan pilgrimage to Aldbourne where `The Daemons` was filmed and for good measure we also called in on the `Mawdryn Undead` location too.

Just as it seemed we were in a stable patch things changed again. At the end of 1986 Tony was leaving partly due to an incident at an earlier Exec meeting. He’d been on holiday and there had been a discussion on his progress as co-ordinator raising a few criticisms. Typical of course that this happened in his absence; in fact the same thing had happened to me the previous meeting; it is irritating to read these things in minutes later possibly out of context of the overall breadth of the discussion. Yet this seemed to be a major factor in him deciding to leave at the end of the year. He had originally planned to stay till the following September. Incidentally, it was from this incident that Dominic May acquired the nickname Slimy. Having actually started the discussion, Dominic then wrote a letter in the Exec circular withdrawing his comments. Incidentally a few decades later Tony did eventually return and nowadays seems to run the entire DWAS!

There was another cloud on the horizon too; something that reflected the success the Society was enjoying at this time. It seemed that we were liable to pay VAT which is paid on turn over rather than profit. It was later alleged that we tried to brush the VAT problem under the carpet, but in fact we sought out somebody with a legal background to help out. This led to Andrew Beech being appointed co-ordinator from January 1987. This scenario did give us an insight into the somewhat difficult taxation system in the UK which seems designed (deliberately or otherwise) to hinder smaller businesses whose turnover is likely to exceed their profit.

By the end of the year Nick had moved on from being LGs Assistant to be replaced initially by Phil Akiens from the Leicester Local Group for a couple of issues and then Andy Cull, the Brighton local group organiser. Though I’d never met him in person I’d seen Andy’s vibrant newsletters for his group and knew he was a good graphics person and thankfully he accepted the challenge. I later found out his views on local groups were broadly similar to mine so he became someone I could swap ideas with as well. In these primitive days it was all done by letter- we only met about twice the whole time!                   

By now support for LG's was diminishing with new Exec members seeing them more as a nuisance than an asset, back to the situation before I’d come in. What this led to was my becoming a sort of buffer zone - defending LG's to the Exec and vice versa. Several ideas I presented - like discount deals for LGs on CT adverts - were rejected and several small incidents at different groups were blown out of proportion to back a general Exec feeling that LG's were a liability.

One good thing Andrew was responsible for was the creation of a limited company, Dominitemporal Services to run conventions under a separate budget aimed at avoiding future VAT woes as its turnover would be separate to the main DWAS account. Conventions were always the largest financial area of the DWAS. Unlike Tony though, Andrew did not discourage personal divisions and often would take sides rather than try to diffuse a problem. Once he created an additional post and became Chairman of the Exec a gold throne was surely months away. 

“Bad Blood”

On the Saturday during 1987’s PanoptiCon an article appeared in the Daily Mail in which Andrew was highly critical of the then new season. We heard that both Sylvester McCoy and JNT were unhappy about this as it was hardly positive publicity. A subsequent DWB interview (they loved all this of course) had Sylvester criticising Andrew and the latter responding in a very haughty manner. Andrew’s close association with DWB and his attitudes towards DWAS business not to mention that national newspaper article led me to put a no confidence vote against Andrew at the January 1988 Exec meeting. This was of course a colossal mistake. There had been a few no confidence votes and I don’t think they’d ever got rid of anyone, simply soured relations.

I’m not saying he was concerned he could be voted out but Andrew went hard on his response unveiling the full extent of the VAT situation and declaring that only he could deal with it and there would need to be cutbacks in spending. This kicked off a period of DWAS austerity (Dwasterity?) with a membership limit of 2,000 imposed, three issues of CT did not appear and the magazine Tardis was scrapped despite being included in the membership fee. The no confidence vote of course fell away but that was not the end of the matter.

I daresay he’d deny it but Andrew then spent much of the year thinking of ways to curtail local groups in general and me in particular, It was a barrage for sure and I don’t know if he intended that I’d give up and resign or what? Maybe I should have. I was gradually isolated as the year went on, like being trapped on an iceberg watching bits float off. Once Brian Robb, a former local group malcontent with his own old scores to settle, became CT editor he got the others to agree to the Local Group Bulletin becoming part of the newsletter CT and then set me an impossible deadline when we had a circular at the printers at the time. Thus, he went off and advertised for his own LG editor.  Andy quit, essentially as a gesture against the rest of the Exec, but it left me forced to accept Brian's choice of editor - Cambridge LG leader Simeon Hearn. We got on but I was right to sense Simeon had an agenda of his own which meant he was no more supportive of me than Andrew was, he just pretended he was. By this stage, in modern parlance, the drama was next level.

Around this time, thinking legacy for the sake of the groups, because I knew one way or another I wouldn’t be in the post for that much longer, I had appointed a second assistant East Kent LG Leader Tom Robin who would be helping out but was also someone I thought would be able to take over from me. He was more diplomatic and less interested in the politics; we shared similar views on the way forward for groups though some of the talk I had with local group leaders around this time was about the possibility of groups spinning off from the DWAS altogether.

With the local group bulletin about to be absorbed into CT (allowing its editor rather than me the final decisions on what was included), I somewhat overstepped the journalistic mark in the final independent one by including a piece that mentioned a rumour about Ian Levine and missing episodes. Whether this was true or not, it was a fairly widespread story doing the rounds at the time. I was then the recipient of an irate early morning Saturday phone call from the Superfan himself.  “You don’t realise what I’ve done for the programme” he said and all I could think of was `Attack of the Cybermen`. While he also said he would be content with an apology in the next bulletin, I heard later he was uncomfortable with the rumour being published regardless of whether it was true or not.  Andrew made up the story that Levine was actually planning to sue me and on the basis of this, and without asking for any comment from me, I was suspended from the Exec pending a special meeting. Dramatic cliffhanger.

“And in the end…”

The suspension ended up running for seven weeks however the Exec would now have to contrive something else once the whole court case idea never happened. So it was that in October 1988 I attended my last Exec meeting. I was cleared over the Levine issue, which suddenly didn’t seem important to anyone despite the suspension, but that was because behind the scenes they had concocted a way to deal with me and with what they saw as `troublesome` local groups. This was a new system where each Exec member looked after a few Local groups, which I’m sure the others were delighted with. The LG Supervisor post would be downgraded to assistant level- reporting to the editor of CT.  As I might have said to a passer by after leaving the meeting in London, “Guv, they done stitched me up!”

As hinted earlier, some of the larger, more active local groups had already been spit balling the concept of an independent local group network. The idea was they would break away from the DWAS en masse, form a loose association and maybe have a combined zine and an annual event. I was drafted into this once I’d left the Exec and after discussions an actual logo and name- Network Who- had been created. However, for me to get involved in something like this after four and a half years at the heart of the DWAS was a bit much so I backed off and even had a statement put into CT to the effect. Fast forward eighteen months (long enough to wait?) to mid -1990 and I’d started going to events again and at both TellyCon and Carousel that year had been part of discussions about reviving this idea with various luminaries. `Project X` as it became known was one of those things where, although a lot of people were enthusiastic about it, there was never a time when everyone was enthusiastic at once! Plus 1990 was probably the worst year to try and launch any kind of Doctor Who society.

There is a nice postscript to all this. In 1996, Neil Hutchings and I attended the DWAS 20^th anniversary event and met the people looking after local groups then and found out they’d been around when I was doing the job. What’s more they had revived the Local Groups Bulletin and were very complimentary about what I had done back in the 80s. To me that was the best thing of all to discover, it kind of made all that trouble worthwhile because at the end of the day we all want to be liked don’t we?