Over the 58 year history of the GFS, members have had the privilege of receiving a magazine which informs of the current activities of the Society and also educates them with articles on George and Beryl Formby and all aspects of their life and times. The magazine has evolved over the years from a few pages, hand- stapled together, to the present glossy 32-page high quality journal. The current editor is Tony Thornton who is the longest serving of all the past editors and has been in this post for the last twenty years. The magazine is delivered by post to all members and goes all over the world. It is included in the subscription that members pay when they join the GFS and together with free entry to the four GFS Blackpool conventions, is surely good value. If you wish to receive this publication, join the Society here. As I mentioned in the opening paragraph, the Vellum is as old as the Society. The first magazine was issued in October 1961 just one month after the official inauguration in September 1961. The magazine has changed over the years from a non-standard page size to A5 and then to the existing A4. One thing about our magazine, we have lots of conventions in the past and hopefully in the future and the friendships those conventions created are wonderful. But past conventions are just memories (especially before the video era), and of course memories fade over time and members obviously do not last forever. But the Vellum does! It is a lasting and tangible history of all the people and events that have happened over the last 58 years. At the birth of the GFS it was initially planned to release a magazine every month and that happened for the first three months of 1961, but of course that is a very tall order and the magazine soon settled to two, three and then four issues per year which usually coincide with the next Blackpool convention. In 1964 and early 1965 it appeared that the magazine might have failed as none were issued. But John Walley came to the rescue and issued five newsletters dated between April 1964 to April 1965. John (under the nickname of “John Willie”) then carried on as official editor until September 1972 when illness prevented him from further duties. The magazine has changed dramatically over the years, the first issues had few illustrations but with the introduction of computer technology in the late 1980s and early 1990s all that changed and now the magazine is a feature rich publication. In 2011 Peter Pollard and his good friend Peter Lee decided to create a project that would archive all the existing magazines and present them on a DVD disc so that anyone could read or search through all that history and all those long forgotten moments that helped to create the history. The project took around one year for the two members to scan every page of every magazine from the past 58 years and then to create a navigable system so that users could load the disc contents on to a computer and then just drift back in time! But the job was completed and I am still drifting back in time! It is one of those things were you start to research one thing and end up looking at dozens of others! The one thing to remember about our magazine is that it can only really be as good as the members want it to be. Without their input it would surely struggle, but the last 58 years have proved that even though George Formby died all those years ago, people still want to discuss and read about him and thanks to The Vellum, his memory will continue to live on.

John Walley

John Guy

Tony Thornton