An Interview with Maggy Edwards of the Official Leonard Nimoy Fanclub
| Interviews by Fans | |
|---|---|
| Title: | An Interview with Maggy Edwards of the Official Leonard Nimoy Fanclub |
| Interviewer: | Dale Pierce |
| Interviewee: | Maggy Edwards |
| Date(s): | April 2006 |
| Medium: | |
| Fandom(s): | Leonard Nimoy and Star Trek: TOS |
| External Links: | online here |
| Click here for related articles on Fanlore. | |
An Interview with Maggy Edwards of the Official Leonard Nimoy Fanclub was conducted by Dale Pierce in April 2006.
The topic was Maggy Edwards and The Official Leonard Nimoy Fan Club.
Some Topics Discussed
- Edwards is a "a classic trekker who has little time for the spin-offs"
- The Official Leonard Nimoy Fan Club
- relating to Spock
- fundraisers gone south
- why having Nimoy involved in the club is good
Excerpts
How did you come to run the The Official Leonard Nimoy Fan Club?
When the British club Spotlight Leonard Nimoy closed, 3 members wanted to keep it running, so although we lived in different parts of UK, we met up to decide which one of us would run the club, and ended up deciding it was far better to share the job between us, and so the Leonard Nimoy Fan Club UK was born over coffee, on Birmingham railway station!
At that time we were not official, and not really looking at becoming an international club. But it grew beyond our hopes and soon the fans were getting confused, because of the UK part of the club's name - thinking we only covered the UK, but actually by this time, the membership was worldwide, so it needed a re-think. I thought if we were going to do the job right, we needed official status and a new name, so we acquired both, and became The Official Leonard Nimoy Fan Club with Leonard's kind permission. Now we have members of all ages and nationalities. When Leonard announced he was going to concentrate on his photography and not the film work, people said our job was done, but we actually never have been busier and still are having a job keeping up with all the things Leonard is doing.
What does membership entail?
We issue four newsletters a year of around 50 pages each. We hold a convention in UK, this will be the third year, it's small, nothing like the big Creation cons, we run them as a chance for fans to meet and chat, no guests, just fans, and any money raised goes to charity, in the tradition of the old conventions. Definitely not a profit-making exercise. This year it's for Alzheimer's.
How much cooperation do you get from Leonard Nimoy himself in this venture?
He has been wonderful. He has a very busy life and we try hard to keep contact to a minimum, although that isn't always possible ... He has wonderful staff to help and they are just great too. As the official club we need to be sure to act in a responsible way. Leonard does comment on things and he receives a copy of each newsletter, so things have to be right, or at least as right as possible. Whatever we have asked of him he always has been there for us.
What attracted you to him directly as opposed to other Star Trek cast members?
I guess the character he played, Spock. The loner, the misunderstood one.
As a teenager I felt like that a lot of the time, plus he was just so sexy too.
When I first met him I was really worried that the man I had liked for so long wouldn't actually be as nice as I had imagined, having met other actors who were just so big-headed and full of themselves, but I can honestly say he was so kind and thoughtful ... and a wonderful smile, not at all Vulcan.
Are there any other specific Nimoy clubs out there, as opposed to say all the Star Trek clubs you find?
There are some good Nimoy sites that list his work or have lots of pictures, if you do a search you find them, but we are the authorized one. That makes a big difference because we answer to Leonard. We act as a buffer between him and the fans. We see our job as helping fans by giving them correct information and guarding their interests and helping Leonard by letting him know what fans are saying and protecting his privacy as much as we can.
How many club members have you met face to face?
We wanted to make ourselves as accessible as possible, so at events we wear tee's with our names on and then there are the conventions. We went to Germany for a con last year, and I am in LA at least once a year. But I guess I spend most of the time using email to chat to fans, be they members of the club, or just asking questions about Leonard or his work. The Internet has certainly been a wonderful thing to bring fans together ... shame it wasn't around when the Star Trek series was first shown, maybe it wouldn't have been cancelled ... can you imagine the letter writing campaign, if it had the Internet to help spread the word?
Any interesting stories to tell about your involvement with the club?
Oh yes, like the time I took a short cut while visiting Leonard's office and ended up trapped in the fire escape ...
But I guess the best actually happened just a short while after we started the club we were attending a con and Leonard was a guest. He had been signing and had left for another event. I noticed girls had been fighting for the cup he had drank from, which gave me the idea of how to raise money for charity, so we began to charge 10p for a quick (and I mean quick) sit on the chair Leonard had used. This went fine, except it got real hard to get some girls to move on ... anyway we were really pleased at how popular the quick sit was, until a girl who was very tall walked up, paid her 10p and proceeded to try to walk off with the chair ... now this chair belonged to the hotel so we ran after her only to find she didn't speak any English at all and thought for 10p she had actually bought the chair and was taking it home. We had a hell of a time convincing her to return it to the function room. At least we raised a nice sum for charity, but I don't think we will do that kind of fund-raising again.