Image © Andrew Trowbridge, 1986

The SFOW Express was a tapezine that lit the fuse and led to an explosion of Doctor Who tapezine production in the beautiful English cathedral city of Salisbury, near the borders of Wiltshire and Dorset. It was produced by the the Salisbury Federation of Whovians – hence SFOW (pronounced suh-fow, in case you were wondering) – a Doctor Who Appreciation Society-affiliated Local Group which brought together fans of the series living in Salisbury and the surrounding area.

The story – or at least one side of it – began in 1984 on a very crowded and noisy Victory Tours school coach as Warren Cummings boarded and attempted to find himself a seat for the journey home. Warren remembers the day well: “Avoiding eye contact with the local bully and trying not fall over my undone laces – laces were not my forté; no co-ordination – I shuffled and dragged my feet down the aisle as only a schoolboy can, towards a double seat already occupied by another. I asked if I could sit down and the Sixth Former said, ‘Sure’. I knew he was a Sixth Former as he was wearing a white shirt with various ‘Homepride’ bowler-hatted figures printed on it and was sporting the loudest, most colourful floral tie I had ever seen. It was most definitely not school uniform. This young fellow was Andrew Trowbridge and this was the beginning of my time travelling adventures. I wasn’t to know it but I had just met my new best friend and was about to learn that there were Doctor Who fans even in the deepest corners of the South Coast. It was a 30-minute journey and, shortly after beginning it, Andrew produced a copy of Doctor Who Magazine and from that moment on a conversation began that is still on-going today. I turned and said, ‘Ah, Barbara, Ian and the Doctor,’ pointing to the picture inside and from then on ‘Contact had been made’.”

The friendship blossomed, with discussions on many journeys to and from school touching upon memories of Doctor Who, its protagonists and monsters, and the Target novelisations that were being published regularly at the time. By this time, Andrew had joined the DWAS and, on one particular coach journey, Andrew mentioned that he planned to go into Salisbury at the weekend as he had seen in the December 1985 Celestial Toyroom newsletter that a Salisbury Doctor Who Local Group was in the offing and Doctor Who fans in the area were being asked to get in touch. “He invited me to tag along,” Warren recalls. “Now, it was a bit cut off in the villages where we lived, so contact with mainstream fandom wasn’t even an option. Andrew was a member of the DWAS and I wasn’t. Celestial Toyroom was our only source of information and I would wait with baited breath for it to appear on a trip into school. Much is taken for granted today, with information at your very fingertips from all corners of the world. I lived in a village where the telephone numbers consisted of just three digits, and the World Wide Web was a long way away. Fandom was alive and well and living in London and the Home Counties and – accepting Andrew’s invitation – I was about to widen my horizons.”

The Salisbury Federation of Whovians was formed shortly afterwards, duly instated as the 57th DWAS Local Group in January 1986. Founded by Andrew Wink, the group initially met monthly at the Catherine Wheel public house on Milford Street, before moving later in the year to its new home, Beechwood House on Old Blandford Road in the city. These latter meetings were held on the last Sunday of each month, between 2.00 and 7.30pm. Other meetings, including the 23rd Anniversary event in November 1986, were held at the United Reform Church on Fisherton Street. An early highlight for the Local Group was the staging of a month-long static display in November and into December 1986 in the children’s section of the Salisbury City Library which comprised posters, memorabilia and large scale models. Andrew Wink had managed to get hold of a Dalek as one of the exhibits and this proved to be a great draw for younger visitors who attended for the daily afternoon story reading. A brief article appeared in the local Salisbury newspaper, The Journal, comprising information about the local group and the exhibition, alongside a photo of the Dalek with a group of kids around it whilst it read a story to them!

The group also made an appearance at a book fair in the nearby market town of Trowbridge (which wasn’t named after SFOW’s Andrew Trowbridge, despite rumours to the contrary!). Group members Andrew Wink, Warren Cummings and Keith Musselwhite all dressed for the occasion, as Warren recalls, “We all went in costume: Andrew Wink as the Master, I was Hartnell and Keith went as Davison. This was much to the amusement of our fellow train passengers, something I wasn’t quite prepared for as my diary entry reflected, ‘What’s the matter with the public these days: have they no scene of fun? One woman asked if we were mad, I replied that one does not need to be mad to time travel, but if it helps you sleep well at night, then we’re all barking! We must have made some kind of impact at the book fair as the local press took some pictures of us that appeared in that week’s soon-to-be fish and chips wrapper.”

Right from the start there was a creative outlet for the Salisbury group, with Andrew Wink sending a letter out to all members in which he suggested that the group produce a Local Group audiozine. He already had a title, The SFOW Express, and asked if group members would like to contribute. Warren Cummings remembers that this led to discussions over several days with Andrew Trowbridge on the school bus: “Andrew and myself were at that stage into an audiozine called Sonic Waves and we were becoming aware of how these audio format thingies were constructed. Then it came, the epiphany that would transport two rural Doctor Who fans into their very own adventure in Time and Space (or, in this case, Shepherd’s Bush)… I don’t know who thought of the idea of an adventure but we both came up with the idea of using the storyline of Genesis of the Daleks and playing with it to meet our needs. The ideas flowed thick and fast, it was like a wave of unstoppable creativity sweeping over us. ‘It’s a mad idea. LET’S DO IT!!!’ read my diary entry. ‘We’re making a Doctor Who’. It perhaps sounds stupid but Andrew and I knew exactly what we wanted to do, how to structure it, how to create a storyline that was funny and at that point very topical and we just let the ideas run free. We never said, ‘Well we can’t do that because we don’t have the technology to produce that type of effect or atmosphere,’ we just went for it and wrote it together. I’d cycle over to Mr. T.’s house to sit and listen to his readthrough of Genesis of the Wogans Episode 1 and then we’d play with it, rejig it and throw in some way out ideas. Now that I come to think of it, it had all the hallmarks of a structured script meeting. Andrew is a natural writer; he has a brain which I’m convinced is like an everlasting corridor lined with filing cabinets, stretching as far as the eye can see. He has the capacity to latch onto subject matter and create situations which the reader or viewer are just sucked into and taken on a rollercoaster of fun and mirth in a Bob Holmes type of way. On the other hand, I’m the producer and director type; I create through sound and vision and love to stretch that medium to its utmost, even if we lacked the sort of equipment we really needed. We were under no illusion it was going to be rough and ready. We had no professional equipment, but it was our creation. And I think it’s this that makes the creative juices flow, when the subject matter is a passion of yours and you get to indulge your fantasy of creating a little slice of Doctor Who in your own world you feel a little pride. Yes, I know it was only an episodic audio play recorded on domestic tape recorders, full of dodgy acting and very dodgy effects but, when you’re 15 and living in the back of beyond, it helped you to connect to your favourite programme.”

Andrew Trowbridge also remembers the recording sessions fondly: “Doing Genesis of the Wogans as a play, of course, you suddenly had to come up with clips, music, sound effects – so we used the Doctor Who Sound Effects album, of course, and I also used a couple of clips of the Kenny Everett radio show that I’d taped a few years beforehand. All this stuff comes in useful! Peter Miles, [Nyder in Genesis of the Daleks], even had a copy of Genesis of the Wogans. I slipped him a copy once. I think he was confused...”

Between these flights of fancy on compact cassette, the Salisbury Local Group flourished, enjoying an influx of new members. The fan group’s largest project and arguably their greatest success was The White Hart Convention, which they held on 28th February 1988. “The name came from the local hotel that the convention was booked to take place in,” Warren Cummings comments. “With guests booked, tickets sold and only six weeks to go, the venue informed us that they had double-booked us and the hotel would not be available to us on the arranged day. At this point, the whole local group pulled together and we managed to find another local hotelier who was great and really happy to have us. It was a small event – 200 attendees – and Sophie Aldred, Mark Strickson, Julie Brennon, Richard Franklin, Dick Mills and Stuart Evans of Sevans Models were our guests. It was a lively one-day affair which raised a couple of thousand pounds for the Foundation for the Study of Infant Deaths. It was one of Sophie Aldred’s first conventions, and she was great and willing to get amongst the fans and talk to them. Sophie was desperate to get into a Dalek, so we managed to convince the owner of one of them to allow her to do so. She wheeled her way into the Richard Franklin panel and, having been wired up to a Dalek microphone, she asked a few questions about the show. Richard was a great sport considering that no one had told him what was going on. The Dalek was then duly opened up and out popped Sophie to a barrage of camera flashes, one of which belonged to a national newspaper, the Daily Mirror, which on the following Monday carried a glowing report of our small convention – and, of course, gave both the programme and Sophie some great publicity. On the Monday, we arranged the local regional BBC news magazine South Today to film the handing over of the cheque by a Dalek to the charity representatives, who were driven off down the river in a water-going Amphicar from the nearby Beaulieu motor museum.”

By the time of The White Hart Convention, The SFOW Express had already reached a natural conclusion as group members had started to create Doctor Who and other projects independently. As the 1980s slowly drew to a close, the Local Group did so also, as Warren Cummings recalls: “As we moved towards late 1989 and into 1990 we were all still in touch with one another, but we weren’t coming together for local group meetings. Life had moved on, some of us had started to create tapezines and fan literature of our own and others had started to make plans for video productions and books. The Local Group, unbeknownst to us, had helped to nurture fresh talent and awaken aspirations within us that would follow us well into our twenties and beyond.”

SFOWing out at Children in Need - Nick Goodman and Andrew Trowbridge
Image © Nick Goodman, 1988

One of the final activities that the Local Group engaged in was to attend the BBC’s Children in Need outside broadcast on Friday 18th November 1988, when BBC South decided to carry out their regional opt out section in Salisbury.

Anyone perusing the contents listing of The SFOW Express might be tempted to consider it the Genesis of the Wogans Show, as this comedic serial dominated its first three issues, with Issue 3 being given over almost entirely to this five-part serial. Its first episode was recorded on three occasions: for The SFOW Express Issue 1, reperformed for Issue 3, and remade for a second time for the unfinished tapezine, The Ipcress File. Episode 1 commenced with an amusing twist on the Time Lord’s exchange with the Doctor concerning his mission in Genesis of the Daleks – the television serial that this audio play paid homage to and gently spoofed:

TIME LORD: Ah, Doctor!

DOCTOR: Don’t you realise it’s dangerous to interrupt an out-of-work production team?

TIME LORD: Oh, come now, Doctor. We Time Lords transcended such simple concepts when Colin Baker was less than half his present size.

DOCTOR: Look. Whatever I’ve done for you in the past, I’ve more than made up for. I will not tolerate this continued interference in my contract.

TIME LORD: Continual? We pride ourselves that we seldom interfere in the affairs of others.

DOCTOR: Except mine.

TIME LORD: You, Doctor, are a special case. You enjoy the freedom we allow you. Occasionally, not continually, we ask you to do something for us.

DOCTOR: I told you in 1983 and I’m telling you again, I will not do it!

TIME LORD: Wogans!

DOCTOR: Wogans? Tell me more.

TIME LORD: We foresee a time when the Wogans will have destroyed all other presenters and become the dominant creature on television.

DOCTOR: Feasible. Tell on.

TIME LORD: We’d like you to return to Shepherd’s Bush at a point in time before the Wogans evolved.

DOCTOR: Do you mean avert their employment?

TIME LORD: Or affect their genetic development, so they evolve into less aggressive presenters.

In line with Genesis of the Daleks, the Time Lord had already transported the Doctor to his destination – in that case, Skaro, and in this, Shepherd’s Bush. Rather than a Time Ring, in Genesis of the Wogans, the Doctor is presented with a bus ticket: “If you’re lucky, it might return you to the TARDIS once you’ve finished here. But there’s just one thing: be careful not to lose it. That bus ticket is your lifeline and we can’t afford another one.”

The Wogans of the title were of course inspired by the then seemingly omnipresent BBC television and radio presenter Terry Wogan (1938-2016), who at the time of The SFOW Express was presenting his eponymous chat show – Wogan – on three nights each week in primetime on BBC1.

Warren Cummings moved away to London and from Doctor Who fandom in 1990. Since his return to the fold in 2009, he has featured as P.C. Warren, a character in Andrew Trowbridge’s book Toby and Lucie, has become a semi-regular contributor to Andrew and Lisa Parker’s Round the Archives and In Conversation podcasts, and has written many well-received obituaries for the podcast’s blog. Since 2020, Warren has been a regular voice on FAB Radio International’s show about modern and archive television, Vision On Sound, created and presented by Martin Holmes, and occasionally pops up in Paul Chandler’s The Shy Life Podcast as ‘Uncle Warren’. In late 2021, Warren created his first podcast, based around the world of old films. Initially entitled A Raspberry Mivvi & A Foot Long Dog, the podcast was reimagined as The Cinematic Sausage and is still going strong. Warren lives in Dorset with a lot of ideas but lacks the bravery to put them into the written word, as he is afflicted with a ridiculous sense of humour.

The SFOW Express deserves to be remembered for the explosion of Salisbury-made Doctor Who tapezines that followed in its wake after the dissolution of the area’s Doctor Who Local Group – the likes of Death Zone, DZFM, Rayphase Shift and others – maybe more than for its actual content.

Its undoubted highlight is Genesis of the Wogans, which is certainly the most inventive feature of The SFOW Express, and compares well to much of the sketch comedy featured in other tapezines. Andrew Trowbridge and Warren Cummings prove themselves to be adept at tickling the listeners’ funny bones in the Wogans serial, with Andrew’s eccentricity and Warren’s charisma coalescing to form an engaging chemistry – and it is perhaps this, ahead of the dialogue and jokes, that helps Genesis of the Wogans to really come into its own.

Much of the other content in The SFOW Express is familiar – clips, trailers and music tracks – and some of it is recognisable for the simple reason that it was sourced from other tapezines, mainly Sonic Waves. That is not to say that there wasn’t original content, just that in the early issues of The SFOW Express, the reviews and features were arguably a sideshow to the episode excerpts, novelty items and single record spots. The occasional review was a welcome but these were too infrequent for The SFOW Express to really establish a unique identity. It is perhaps ironic that its fourth and final issue appears to have addressed this imbalance, judging by the content known to have been included, but that of the four issues produced, it is this particular one that does not seem to have survived. Until it surfaces, it is likely that The SFOW Express will be remembered for Genesis of the Wogans and for being a proving ground for those Wiltshire- and Dorset-based fans who went on to produce and contribute to other tapezines in the years that followed.

Alan Hayes