After reaching the moon, Rob has now hit the stars

LONG-RUNNING BORO FANZINE IS SETTING THE STANDARDS

- By CRAIG JOHNS

WHEN Rob Nichols stood outside the Riverside selling the latest edition of the Fly Me To The Moon fanzine ahead of Middlesbrough's win over Oxford United last season, even he didn’t even realise he was making history.

In getting that edition, and many since, out, longstanding editor Rob had ensured that the fanzine that has become an institution around Boro had also just become the most prolific fanzine in the country. Overtaking The Oatcake from Stoke, that April edition, it's 655th in total, made FMTTM the record holder for most printed fanzines of all time.

Explaining how he only came to realise after, Rob revealed: “There's been a big football fanzine exhibition that’s just finished in Leeds. It was a researcher for the exhibition who looked into it and realised that FMTTM was just about to overtake the record. He got in touch to let me know.

“We've since overtaken the previous highest The Oatcake from Stoke, which stopped making editions in 2019. There are only around three or four fanzines who would do an edition for every match. The Oatcake overtook us quite a few years ago and I remember looking one day when I'd found out they'd stopped.