The first logo for the fan club, 1988

In 1976, a fan wrote to Noele Gordon suggesting that the ATV soap should have a fan club. Noele replied saying she'd love for Crossroads to have its own society. Anne Meredith started the small 'ATV Crossroads Fan Club' later in the year. It was a small club which never went national and remained based only in the Midlands. With the departure of Noele Gordon from the series in 1981, out of disgust, the club closed to new members. John Jameson-Davis launched The Crossroads Appreciation Society on April 4th 1988 after months of planning, starting way back in the summer of 1987. It was a vast community of Crossroads fans who wanted to keep Crossroads alive and remember Noele Gordon. We are officially known as 'The Noele Gordon and Crossroads Appreciation Society', and of course today Noele is still the 'face' of Crossroads, something we are proud to promote, but we have also been known simply as 'Crossroads Appreciation Society' and 'Crossroads Fan Club' on TV features. In April 1988 the society launched a newsletter which mainly continued the story of Crossroads where the final episode left off. For many years the newsletters were sent all over the UK and beyond to fans of the series keen to have a little bit of Crossroads in their lives. The Crossroads Fan Club side of the society, deals with the public events such as the 25th anniversary celebrations in 1989. It cost £12-per-year to join the club. There were also regular gatherings for fans - mainly in Ross-on-Wye, where Noele Gordon is buried.

On the week the society launched we were featured in the TV Times magazine, as well as John appearing on TV-am's Good Morning Britain, BBC1's Open Air and LWT's The 6 O'clock Show. Simon Cole saw John on TV-am and offered to help out with the society.

Simon and John took the Crossroads Appreciation Society to great heights, for a show that had left the television screens it proved to be greatly missed. Fans joined CAS in their droves and made it one of the most popular fan clubs in the UK for a British soap.

Towards the 30th Anniversary of Crossroads Simon and John decided to take a more back-seat role, and with this the newsletter came to an end - amid much protest from the fans who wanted it to continue, however it had started to take up too much of their time, and costs were rising; the society had become so popular it was beginning to be a full time job! So in 1994 CAS took on a new direction.

From then onwards the society would keep the memory of the motel alive by collecting items from the soap and protecting the heritage of the series. New boss at CAS, Peter Kingsman, also appeared on many of the Crossroads tribute shows, including the one we helped bring to life: Crossroads 30 Years On; researched by Simon, John and Peter for Central Television in 1994. CAS was also very much the campaign body for Crossroads fans who wanted to see the show return to a television station: Partial success occurred in 1996 when UK Gold gave in and decided to re-run old episodes. Because at that time Polygram owned the ATV produced episodes, only  a handful were shown from 1981, however all the Central Television episodes were aired.

For over 13 years CAS and its members had been writing to television stations asking, begging and pleading to bring the show back. In 2000, Carlton television seriously considered the idea. And in 2001 the show returned. Peter Kingsman again made numerous appearances to discuss the show including on Channel 5's Open House, Central Television's Central Weekend, ITV2's Soap Fever and ITV1's special documentary looking at the return of the soap.

Well Crossroads was back and CAS had very little to do after that, no longer did Central need to treat us as the Crossroads Public Relation's department (as they had done since 1988, forwarding any of the soaps enquires onto the society.) Carlton were now looking after all the Crossroads enquires, so the society decided to open up its vaults and provide information on the Internet for old and new fans of the soap to share its rich history. The site was to show the new Crossroads fans just what exactly Crossroads was - and the site would also be a place full of nostalgia for those old enough to remember the original. The Crossroads Appreciation Society website actually didn't become known as that until October 20th 2003. The new site was a combination of some already established websites: Our online sites date back to October 2000 with Return To Crossroads by Ian Armitage and The Crossroads Years by Mike Garrett being the two main sites that were merged into the Crossroads Fan Club and Appreciation Society site. Daniel Landsberger had created a Yahoo Group, The Old Crossroads Fan Club, which debated the series. This also formed part of the new site. The arrival of the Crossroads Appreciation Society online coincided with the idea that it would be good to merge the Fan Club, the Crossroads Years and Return To Crossroads into one big site. The new look Crossroads Fan Club became active on January 13th 2003, the same day Crossroads returned for its third series. At this point some of the archive from the former Midlands-only ATV Crossroads Fan Club (1976-1981) was taken into the care of CAS.

John Kavyo and Simon Cole write up the Fan Club newsletters, 1990

In March 2003 it was decided that because the CAS brand had been around since 1988, it was better to re-establish it as the name used for the website rather than The Crossroads Fan Club. So the Crossroads Appreciation Society name was reinstated online. John Jameson-Davis (aka John Kavyo), who launched the Appreciation Society in 1988 returned to the team along with Simon Cole. They both occasionally offer information and items from the archives to keep CAS at the forefront at protecting Crossroads' heritage. Peter Kingsman is also still active within the world of Crossroads, assisting with the recent DVD releases and so forth.

The Crossroads Appreciation Society has since March 2003 slowly been adding more of its archive to the website, but there is still so much more out there we haven't been able to get online yet - we do hope one day we will be able to provide all our Crossroads items to share with you. Mike Garrett continues to produce the online version of CAS, with new contributors such as Justin Mason and Tony Wilson giving their time to the site and society.

But the Crossroads Appreciation Society is not just a website - we aim to archive as much of Crossroads' history and heritage as possible. Of course its an expensive 'hobby' and everything we have at CAS is either donated (rarely) or bought by the team here to keep safe (out of their own funds - we have no budget.)

CAS is also the official Crossroads Fan Club to the television series, with many members offline and online all who still miss the soap and want in some small way to remember it. We have recently had at least three fan club gatherings each year.

You can find out about our TV appearances in the Media page HERE

©Crossroads Appreciation Society, October 2004