The journalist Julie Pritchard, who has died aged 59 of bowel cancer, was the founder of the Nottingham Forest fanzine Brian (aka The Almighty Brian).
Julie’s life was led by her dual passions for music and football. She grew up in Bristol and her journey into journalism began at 15 when she launched Dreams of Children, a fanzine for the Jam.
In her 20s she discovered football and, alongside her then partner Darryl Hunt (the bass player of the Pogues), she launched Balls, a football magazine aimed at women. In a 1988 Guardian interview, Lucy O’Brien hailed Julie as one of “an increasing number of female fans taking aim at male myths about women and the game”.
In the 1980s Julie toured with, and ran merch stands and fan clubs for, bands such as the Housemartins and the Pogues. Through Hunt, she became a Forest fan and eventually settled in Nottingham. In 1988 she launched Brian (named in honour of Brian Clough), chiefly because “no one else had done it”. Julie was the first female football fanzine editor and a pioneer of the genre. However, post-Balls she wrote as J Pritchard in Brian so that her female status in a man’s world would not distract from the work.
Brian ran for 50 issues, from 1988 until 1996. It covered a unique period in Forest’s history with regular trips to Wembley, four trophy wins and, of course, that game against Liverpool at Hillsborough in 1988. Clough himself was aware of Julie and they were photographed together, with Old Big ’Ead describing her as a “little minx”. She also wrote for other publications including I-D, When Saturday Comes and Bandy and Shinty.
I got to know Julie in 2023, when we worked together on a National Lottery-backed project. Together we created a complete digital archive of Brian (which can be read online at www.brianfanzine.com) and made a short film about her fanzine. Afterwards she agreed to write a monthly column about Forest for the magazine that I co-created, LeftLion.
Julie also had an early musical secret that she shared only with close friends. At the age of 10 she stood at the side of stage in The Hague watching her father, Lee Sheriden of Brotherhood of Man, win the Eurovision song contest with Save Your Kisses for Me. Julie was the younger daughter of Lee – aka Roger Pritchard – and his wife, Pat. The year after the Eurovision win, the family moved from Bristol to Buckinghamshire, where Julie attended Beaconsfield high school and Amersham college, where she studied art.
Together with her long-term partner Rob Akers, Julie held a Forest season ticket for several decades and this season they travelled together to away matches across Europe. She loved the underdog and also developed an interest in two other teams; Royale Union Saint-Gilloise (whom she adopted when they were in the Belgian lower leagues) and the Gibraltar national team. She booked her holidays around their fixtures and collected football-loving friends along the way. For Julie, winning or losing a game was not important; it was about the journey and the friendships she made.
Julie is survived by Rob, her parents and her sister, Karen.
