Founder of Preston North End fanzine says new book won’t be ‘what people are expecting’

The founder of Preston North End fanzine The Nose Bag has released a book after popular demand.

Chris Black has released ‘Moocher’, which promises to tell stories about his experiences of ‘football, travel and other bad decisions’.

Chris, 42, has told the Lancashire Post about the process of writing the book and what inspired him to start sharing his PNE musings.

His passion for writing began at a young age and he had a strong interest in a particular genre of reporting but, after not really enjoying education, he went down a different route.

“I’d always wanted to be a journalist,” he said, “and I’d always wanted to be a war correspondent. You’d watch the six o’clock news and see these journalists with bomb-proof jackets and the helmets, you could see them on edge, as action was going on behind them, and I always thought that looks really exciting.

“I know it wouldn’t be for a lot of people, but I thought, you know, that’s a real exciting job, but you’d always be on the edge.

“Unfortunately, I was just never motivated by school. I put it in my book that I’d moved from the Ribbleton area into the Fulwood area. Kids from the Ribbleton area that I would have knocked around with in my younger years, they were saying, ‘Oh, you’re a Fulwood guy now’, and kids from Fulwood were like, ‘You’re a Ribbletonite’.

“I was sort of stuck in like no man’s land, and that sort of transferred to my school life. I still wanted to write, so I started up [blog] prestonaway.co.uk, and then The Nose Bag.”

Chris also started up the Twitter/X account, @pneawaydays, which is still going now but is controlled by other fans. He brought TNB to an end earlier this year with the release of its 29th and final edition, but has since turned his attention to ‘Moocher’, a book he says he was encouraged to write for years by fellow North Enders.

“Unfortunately, with Preston Away, I was a bit young and naive and I suppose you could call what I was doing clickbait these days. I felt like I always had to go too far with it to keep it fresh.

“It came to a point where I had to stop it. I got a bit older, a bit wiser, a bit less naive and a bit more with it.”

He added: “I started the fanzine and I’ve had really good feedback. I did consider trying to stop it earlier because each issue was probably about 100 hours of work from starting it to putting them in the post box.

“I wanted to go out on a high earlier this year. I felt like the fanzine had gone as far as it could, it was at a peak and I thought, perhaps if I take this further, it will lose its novelty, its character.

“I couldn’t guarantee the quality because I was struggling for interviews for one reason or another.

“While I was doing the fanzine, people kept saying, you must write a book, you must write a book. I don’t think it’s the book that they expected, to be honest, but I felt like it was the closure of the fanzine and perhaps the hangover of the fanzine that the book came around, if you know what I mean.

“When people go, I really enjoyed reading that - whether it’s about the book or the fanzine - it makes your day. It just puts a spring in your step.”

Stories from the book go beyond football, and touch on important issues such as mental health. Chris opens up about the struggles he had prior to starting the fanzine.

“I’d started working nights as a HGV driver for a supermarket. I just didn’t agree with nights really and, over six years, I put so much weight on and became really unhealthy, high blood pressure.

“Because of who I was working for, you’ve got to make sure you’re fit for purpose, but I was going the other way.

“I’d sort of come out of one lull, but I was going back into a lull on the other side. I’d started getting into gambling, stopped brushing my teeth and I wasn’t looking after myself, so that’s when I thought, well, this is my perfect time to do the fanzine, to give me something to do.

“I remember The Pie Muncher [PNE fanzine in the 90’s] and, for me, that was the oracle for me growing up.

“I always said I didn’t want the fanzine to be about me. I wanted to do something on behalf of the Preston North End fans. I put stuff in there that I didn’t necessarily agree with and I didn’t see it as being my fanzine to not put it in, I felt like it was the fans writing it and I was just editor.

“With the book, I think people more expected adventure stories of where I’ve been to, like being in Kazakhstan, Pakistan, Israel, Argentina…

“They remember all the weird, die-hard sort of travel stories, but I didn’t feel like I could write it and not make it sound fabricated.

“I was telling these travel stories but I was getting pulled in the other way, of telling more personal stories. Going on away days and whatever might have happened at, say, Coventry away, always seemed to tie into other things as well, so I just let my fingers on the keyboard do the talking.”

It’s £10 to buy ‘Moocher’, with £2.50 of each sale going to the Mary O’Gara Foundation.

Mary was working for the NHS as a trainee nursing associate when she took her own life in 2020. Now, Mary’s family and friends - including parents Sharon and Paul - are working to raise awareness and support the effort to prevent suicide among young people. Ambassadors for the charity include ex-North End goalkeepers Alan Kelly and Andy Lonergan.

“Sometimes you see people, I see a lot of it at my work, and they’re all happy and jolly, and people will think they are like that all the time. But it won’t always be like that,” said Chris.

“Sharon and Paul are working to make people aware that mental health struggles can come in all different forms, and to just raise awareness.”

Chris doesn’t have any more PNE projects lined up but, at a time when change around the club - in one form or another - is imminent, there could still be plenty more to write about in the future.

“I say I’m retired now, but, you know, nights are getting longer, aren’t they? Who knows where your mind goes when the nights are long? I always say I wasn’t going to do a book, but just one day I woke up and thought, right, I’m going to do it.

“I’m saying I’m retired, but I might be like Tyson Fury. I might have about five retirements!

“The football club is in a period of transition and we’ve got to keep the faith. I know it’s hard. I’ve had 35 years of it, but we’ve just got to keep the faith.

“It’s just a transition period. And hopefully, after this season, we’ll look back and go, what was all the fuss about?”

You can purchase ‘Moocher’ here, as well as back issues of TNB over the years.

To make an additional donation to the Mary O’Gara Foundation, click here.