The Official Red Dwarf Fan Club
| Fan Club | |
|---|---|
| Name: | The Official Red Dwarf Fan Club (TORDFC) |
| Dates: | 1990–present |
| Founder(s): | Nic Farey |
| Leadership: | Nic Farey (1990–3); Jane (?–2005); James Bull (2005–present) |
| Country based in: | UK |
| Focus: | Red Dwarf |
| External Links: | www.tordfc.co.uk/ (to 2001), www.reddwarffanclub.com/ (2002–present) |
| Click here for related articles on Fanlore. | |
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The Official Red Dwarf Fan Club (TORDFC) is an official but fan-run fanclub for the British sf/comedy television series Red Dwarf. It was founded in 1990 by Nic Farey and gained official status soon afterwards.[1][2]
The club is based in the UK but has international membership. In 1992 the club had over a thousand members, and in 2000 it had 7000.[3] The club won the 1994 Cult TV award for Best UK Fan Club.[4] It was mentioned on the show in the Back to Earth series of 2009.[1]
About
May the farce be with you..Established way back in 1990, The Official Red Dwarf Fan Club is managed and operated by fans, for fans of Red Dwarf - BBC 2's long-running space comedy series.
While being an independent, stand-alone entity funded entirely by its members, TORDFC is uniquely supported by the makers of the show at Grant Naylor Productions. This support enable TORDFC exclusive and unrivalled access to the cast and crew of the show.
Our products include our award-winning quarterly magazine, Better Than Life, and subscription-access Internet site, BTLi.
We also organise Dimension Jump, the almost-annual Red Dwarf Live Weekend.
Put simply, TORDFC is the essential club for any self-respecting Red Dwarf fan, wherever you are in the world. Offering more fun than a night on the town with Lister, TORDFC is more exclusive than Rimmer's wallet, and even Old Iron Balls himself couldn't argue with our rates.
The Official Red Dwarf Fan Club.
Some things were never meant to make sense.[5]
The Australia and New Zealand Branch
The Electronic Tension Sheet is an offshoot of this club. It was a member of Multiverse Science Fiction Group.
History
Nic Farey describes the club's foundation in 2011:
Looking back, it seems kind of haphazard really! Red Dwarf was a frequent topic of conversation at the London First Thursday meetings (which by this time were being held at the Wellington pub by Waterloo Station), and as fans do, the topic of “we should start a fan club” was raised. Having had some fan club experience with the Star Trek lot (I’d also published a fanzine or two by this point), and being really into the show, I was coming up with some ideas on how it might be done. After a couple of months of this kind of chit-chat, various people were admonishing me to get on and do it instead of just talking about it, so I applied my organisational skills and came up with a plan. Historically, then, The Official Red Dwarf Fan Club was indeed started in a pub… We had word-of-mouth going, ads in other fan club ‘zines we knew of, SF newsletters and so on, thinking that we’d maybe get a couple hundred members (ahem). ...
Part of the master plan (ahem) included an idea to make the club “Official” by getting the blessing of Rob and Doug, so I contacted their office with an outline of what we were trying to do, the structure of it, newsletter schedules and so on, and set up a meeting. This was really before anything had gotten started, although I’d made some enquiries about badges, membership cards and the like from suppliers I’d used before in other fannish endeavours. I went in with a copy of the SF newszine Critical Wave, published by my great friends Martin Tudor and Steve Green in the Midlands, basically selling Rob and Doug that the fan club newsletter would be “like this”. The lads were interested, welcoming and put me well at ease. That first meeting of maybe 30 minutes ended up with a “Go for it, Nic”, so we were committed at that point (or should have been).[2]
Activities
The club has run the Dimension Jump convention since 1992. It published the quarterly club magazine Better than Life from 1990 until 2007, and has published another club magazine, Back to Reality, since 2009. It maintains a club website, including a members-only site with forums known as "BTL Online" or "BTLi".
References
- ^ a b Red Dwarf.co.uk: News: In The Club (accessed 5 September 2014)
- ^ a b Ganymede & Titan: The Beginning (accessed 5 September 2014)
- ^ The Official Red Dwarf Fan Club web site: About (2 November 2000; via Wayback Machine)
- ^ RED DWARF Frequently Asked Questions List (FAQ) (accessed 4 September 2014)
- ^ The Official Red Dwarf Fan Club web site: Welcome (18 November 2003; via Wayback Machine)