The family of Fanderson founding member David Nightingale are in the process of sorting through his estate, and we’ve offered to try to help sell some of his old stock of Engale products.
We’ve now got a limited stock of Century 21 (the successor to the fondly-remembered SIG) and Action 21 magazines. Just click on the Engale Marketing category in our Shop to see what’s available, and we’ll update this as more products become available to us.
With, perhaps, a little spare time over the holidays, why not review the products you’ve bought from Fanderson and help your fellow fans?
Unlike some online stores, product reviews in the Fanderson Shop are from genuine club members, so you know you can trust what they say. Unbelievably, some stores use robots or even ‘review farms’ where hundreds of low-paid workers sit, relentlessly hitting the ‘review’ button, and writing what they’re told to say about a product.
But our website only allows genuine members to review our products, as we can only sell to club members. So you know what you’re reading is by a genuine fellow fan.
Why not log in now to write your first review.
Fanderson’s Annual General Meeting (AGM) is a chance for the committee to report on the club’s status and respond to members’ questions, thoughts and suggestions.
All club members are welcome to join the AGM and, to give as many members as possible the opportunity to be involved, Fanderson’s next Annual General Meeting will be held virtually, at midday (GMT) on Saturday 5th March 2022.
The deadline for any proposals is Monday 31st January 2022, by email to fanderson.org.uk@outlook.com. Please check our Constitution for the criteria by which proposals should be submitted for member voting. Please ensure you include:
Voting on any matters raised that require a membership vote will be open online 12th-26th February 2022, in order for results to be verified and available at the AGM.
The deadline for questions or registering to attend the AGM is Saturday 26th February 2022. For security purposes, if you’d like to attend please email fanderson.org.uk@outlook.com, including:
We will send you a link to the AGM by reply to your email, after 26th February. For data protection purposes, the meeting will not be recorded but minuted, and members will have the option to not appear on camera.
Please note that, in order to involve as many members as possible, deadlines are different to those stated in the current Constitution. This in itself will be formally addressed in the revised Constitution that members will be invited to vote on in preparation for this AGM.
It is with great sadness that we report that David Nightingale, one of Fanderson’s founding members and biggest personalities, has died.
David created Supermarionation Is Go! magazine in 1981 and it was to be the bedrock of the club when Gerry Anderson worked with fans to create Fanderson. The quality of SiG was exemplary for a fan magazine, and continued in SiG’s successor Century 21 and the classic television magazine Timescreen. David’s quality ethos was to spur him on to open not one but two Thunderbooks stores, and then to embrace online trading by opening Star Trader. His most recent work for the club brought him full circle as he worked with Mike Jones on the SiG 21 anniversary special.
Larger than life, with a great bubbly, friendly personality, David was a huge fan of Gerry and Sylvia Anderson’s work. He was a regular fixture behind a merchandise table at conventions, where he made many friends.
We will have a full obituary for David Nightingale in FAB 100.
UPDATE 7th December: You should be able to join the live stream of David’s funeral at https://www.blackpoolfunerals.live/
UPDATE: David’s son Stephen advises that the funeral will be held at 12:15 on Wednesday 15th December at Lytham Crematorium, Regent Ave, Lytham Saint Annes FY8 4AB followed by the wake at Blackpool Cricket Club, West Park Drive, Blackpool FY3 9EQ.
The family would like to thank everyone for their kind words and would love to see as many faces as possible at the funeral but understand not everyone can make the day. With that in mind, they have arranged for the funeral to be streamed (details to follow).
The family have discussed donations (“My dad wasn’t a flower man, he was more into his Thunderbird puppets”) and ask that any donations go towards his grandson’s tour with Foxhall Under 11s football team:
Have there really been 99 issues of FAB magazine? Yep, we’ve popped FAB 99 in the post today!
In this issue:
With this FAB we’ve mailed a third set of our 40 FAB Years picture cards. Stick with us and by the end of the year you should have a full set (and an album to put them all in – photo corners/Gloy gum not included)!
FAB 99 also sees the second wave of deliveries of our 2021 membership gift – the oft-requested 7″ Barry Gray EPs from 1986 and 1988, together on our exclusive new CD! We can only give this CD away as part of our membership package, so if you get a renewal notice with FAB 99, make sure you renew by the date given on it so that you don’t miss out!
This mailing also includes your 40th anniversary badge, which we stupidly missed out of the FAB 98 mailing!
If you were late renewing your membership, and so haven’t been included in the FAB 99 mailing, we haven’t forgotten you. Your membership will re-start with FAB 100.
Mail is still being affected by the pandemic, so please be patient whilst your FAB 99 wings its way to you. Amazingly, we know from experience that members living in the same town can receive their packages days apart! Nonetheless, if you’re worried your package might have gone missing in the post (having allowed a reasonable amount of time), please check our Shipping And Returns page before contacting us.
Anyone who missed FAB 98 can now buy it as a back issue, and last year’s membership item – Century 21 Complete Puppet Catalogue – is also now available to buy in the Shop.
How to get FAB magazine? Join Fanderson!
FAB magazine is available exclusively to Fanderson club members – we usually publish three times a year, and do our very best to make each issue a joy to read for every fan – regardless of your favourite Anderson series!
It’s hard to believe now, but the BBC’s purchase of the then 26-year-old Thunderbirds for broadcast in 1991 was so, so significant.
It was, of course, the first ever UK network broadcast of the Supermarionation series (until that point, all screenings had been on the regional ITV stations).
Many of us were particularly keen to watch Trapped In The Sky, Sun Probe, Operation Crash Dive, Terror In New York City, Atlantic Inferno and Ricochet uncut as (unless you were lucky enough to have home video recordings of earlier broadcasts) they were only widely available in edited form as part of the Super Space Theater releases on Channel 5/Polygram VHS cassette.
The BBC clearly weren’t overly confident of their acquisition, as Lady Penelope was tucked into the corner of that week’s Radio Times cover, playing second fiddle to Liza Minnelli. Compare that to when the the series returned again in 2000: Scott, Virgil, Penelope and Brains had a cover each to themselves!
Indeed, although ITC were in the process of lining up an array of licensees to produce merchandise, many were surprised by the series’ success and would be unable to satisfy the unexpected demand that Christmas.
Being the official fan club, Fanderson experienced a surge of interest, with an astonishing 29% jump in members, we had just re-launched the club magazine with FAB issue 1, and a few weeks later hundreds of members would gather in Leeds for our Fanderson 91 convention in October.
Ratings-wise, Thunderbirds secured the #1 spot for BBC2 for its first two weeks (Trapped In The Sky 6.83m and Pit Of Peril 5.83m) and it usually maintained a single-digit position on the chart for the rest of the run. By comparison, the top-rated programme in the UK right now is BBC One’s Vigil, with just 3.607m watching live (although, admittedly, adding catch-up services brings this up to 8.93m). But Thunderbirds still beats today’s #2 programme, Silent Witness, which had 6.749m viewers all told (Thinkbox).
Thunderbirds was so popular that it was obvious that the BBC would quickly snap up Stingray, Captain Scarlet And The Mysterons and Joe 90 for broadcast too, and the UK would enter a purple patch for Anderson fans.
Perhaps hardest of all to believe is that although there were 26 years between Thunderbirds‘ production and those BBC broadcasts, another 30 years has now passed!
Throughout August we ran a membership survey, both to celebrate some of the great things we’ve achieved over our first 40 FAB years, but also to get members’ input to the future of their club.
Thanks to everyone who participated, and we’re starting to go through the results now. As an incentive to take part, all valid entries went into a draw to win one of these fantastic prizes, and we can now confirm the lucky winners:
Prizes will be mailed over the next few days, so keep an eye out for the postman!
OFFERS EXTENDED: As members are still receiving FAB 98 (due to postal delays) we’ve extended this offer until the end of September.
As a special celebratory offer to club members for the whole of August* – our 40th anniversary month – we’re offering a whopping 40% off four popular items of our fantastic, exclusive, merchandise:
All these offers and lots more great exclusive merchandise, always just for Fanderson members, is now in the Shop.
*Obviously, as stocks last, as all our merchandise is limited edition.
Fanderson is 40 years old today!
On 20th August 1981, Gerry Anderson invited representatives from the Fanderson 81 convention, plus clubs Anderpup and the Century 21 Appreciation Society, to meet with him at his office at Pinewood Studios, along with his merchandising right-hand-man Keith Shackleton.
Together, they pooled their ideas and talents to form the world’s only official appreciation society for the work of Gerry and Sylvia Anderson. You can read the minutes of that inaugural meeting here.
On behalf of all Fanderson members:
Finally, THANK YOU to all Fanderson members, past and present. Thanks to your support, after 40 years the club’s stronger than ever.
Join us in celebrating today with something bubbly, whilst you read more about Fanderson’s beginnings here. Or, if you haven’t done so already, take a few minutes to have your say about the future of your club, by completing our 2021 Membership Survey – you could win a FAB prize!
Fanderson is 40 years old this year, and we’re rightly celebrating our many achievements over those four decades.
But as well as looking back over the great things we’ve done, we’re looking forward to the future for the club, and we’d like your input. It’s seven years since we last surveyed the entire membership so it’s certainly the right time to do it again.
Click here to complete the survey and give us your views. The survey will only take a few minutes to complete, and club members’ collective views will really help us ensure we’re making the right decisions for the future.
If you’d rather not complete the survey online, click here for a copy that you can print, complete and then mail to us at Fanderson, 99 Caton Crescent, Milton, Stoke On Trent, Staffordshire, ST6 8XH (United Kingdom).
The 2021 membership survey closes at midnight on 31st August 2021. All valid entries* received by that time will go into a draw to win one of these fantastic prizes:
*valid entries are from current club members, and whose personal details provided in the survey match those in our membership database
