The Official Leonard Nimoy Fan Club

Fan Club
Name:	The Official Leonard Nimoy Fan Club
Dates:
Founder(s):	Mary, Maggy Edwards and Gill
Leadership:
Country based in:	UK
Focus:	Leonard Nimoy
External Links:
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The Official Leonard Nimoy Fan Club is a club based in Coventry, England.

A Title Change

Sometime before 2004, the club dropped "UK" from its title:

Just to put the record straight—we are now "The Official Leonard Nimoy Fan Club". We dropped using the "UK" in our title some time ago as it upset many of our members who live outside the UK and also it gave a false impression of the club. We are based in UK, but have a world-wide membership and are open to everyone—not just those in UK.

Articles and Interviews

• An Interview with Maggy Edwards of the Official Leonard Nimoy Fanclub (April 2006)
• Is Coventry really the final frontier of sci-fi? (September 24, 2014)

From a 2006 Interview

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.

From a 2014 Article

Leonard Nimoy is famous for both pointed ears and the final frontier. He was after all Mr Spock in the original Star Trek series. And believe it or not the Official Leonard Nimoy Fan Club is co-run by a woman in Coventry, [England].

We caught up with her to find out how Coventry became the hub of a Sci-fi legend.

Getting into Spock and Star Trek

Maggy Edwards has been a fan of Star Trek ever since it first came out. When asked why Leonard and not anyone else from the show, Maggy said: “Because he’s gorgeous!”

A love of television shows

Maggy grew up with a love of westerns, another genre of programme that Nimoy has appeared in. And she has even taken a strong liking to other series like Starsky and Hutch and The Professionals (because of Martin Shaw) over the years. But it was classic Star Trek and a certain Mr Spock that Maggy has remained faithful to over the years.

The original and best

And when comparing later Star Trek spin-offs like Voyager and Next Generation to the original series she says there is no contest.

Maggy said: “I have watched the spin-off series, but often the behaviour of certain characters can be unbelievable. One week they’re as nice as pie and the next they’re as stubborn as anything. “With the original series the creator Gene Rodenberry set out the definitve [sic] characteristics of each character so that commissioned script writers would know how Spock, Scotty, Kirk and all the rest would behave. Gene acted as a kind of quality control.”

A growing interest

Maggy has been going to conventions after stumbling across one held at a hotel in Walsgrave, Coventry in the 1980’s and joined Spotlight which organized newsletters and conventions when it was in its eleventh year.

Spotlight was run by a woman called Carol who eight years ago stopped producing the newsletter but continued to run conventions in Nottingham and Leamington which Maggy regularly attended. Spotlight ceased after 22 years, when Carol sadly passed away.

Not a Trekkie

Maggy is quick to distance herself from the Trekkie image. “It’s awful” she said. "When we go to conventions we rarely dress up and I don’t stick on a pair of Spock ears, unless it's a fancy dress disco. Most of us refer to ourselves as Trekkers rather than Trekkies. It’s basically a chance to meet up with people who share a common interest and to learn more about what we love.”

Creating the club

Maggie decided to form the club after getting increasingly frustrated with American newsletters. Maggy said: “The newsletters had a heavy American slant. But I wanted to find out how I could get stuff over here in the UK and Europe.”

Getting going

Maggy had a friend and contact in Liverpool (Gill) and London (Mary) who also wanted to produce a newsletter. And so the Leonard Nimoy Fan club was born. Maggy contacted Leonard’s office and he was happy to give the club official status. And to avoid any confusion with other Nimoy clubs, they added the UK tag to begin with. But with requests from European fans wanting to know if the club was exclusively for the UK (which it wasn’t) the club got rid of the tag.