Your Sinclair
Encyclopedia : Y : YO : YOU : Your Sinclair
Your Sinclair or YS as it was also known, was a British computer magazine for the Sinclair range of computers, specifically the ZX Spectrum. It was formed in 1984 as Your Spectrum, the title being changed to Your Sinclair in 1986 to include coverage of the QL computer. It was published by Dennis Publishing until 1990, when Future Publishing took over. It finally folded in 1993, after the Spectrum games scene diminished to almost nothingness, after 93 issues, having dwindled to less than 40 pages per issue. A 94th issue was published in 2004 and given away free with Retro Gamer magazine. It was essentially a retrospective on the magazine, featuring interviews with notable writers and reviewers, a four page memoire of life working on YS written by Phil South, as well as several new reviews and tips, keeping the style of the original magazine throughout.
Like many later computer magazines, such as Zero and Amiga Power, it created an endearing community with its readers, especially through the letters page (several regular letter writers, such as Rich Pelley, became full time staff members). It could be argued that YS had a language all of its own, inspired by launch editor Roger Munford, and picked up and expanded by subsequent editors and writers, although clear influences can be found in Smash Hits (often as a parody of its style, for example the meaningless Top Ten lists in Pssst) and Private Eye (both written or edited by friends of the YS team) #redirect but also The Goons, PG Wodehouse and the Billy Bunter series of novels by Frank Richards. Latterly, however, the style was partly influenced by the magazines it had inspired itself, such as Amiga Power and fanzine The Thing Monthly.
The original 1986 team included Kevin Cox (editor), Teresa T'zer Maughan (Deputy Editor), Sara Biggs (Production Editor), and Phil South (aka Snouty) (Writer). Marcus Berkmann joined as staff writer in early 1987 when T'zer took over as editor. Freelance writers of the time included John Minson (writing under a bewildering variety of pseudonyms), Peter Shaw, Mike Gerrard, Max Phillips and David McCandless. The final 1993 team consisted of just two permanent staff members, Jonathan Nash (editor) and Andy Ounsted (art editor). Steve Anderson, Rich Pelley, Tim Kemp, Dave Golder and Simon Forrester were among those working on a freelance basis.
YS' content varied widely, sometimes not mentioning the Spectrum on some pages. The news section regularly contained mock celebrity interviews (such as the At The Bus Stop With series), trivial charts, and was basically an outlet for whatever the YS writers felt like talking about. Sometimes the only place within Pssst that you could guarantee to find any news about Spectrum games was the T'zers column, initially written and named after YS's longest reigning editor, Teresa Maughan. YS's quirky, in-jokey, pop-culture-referencing writing style eventually culminated in the covertape-mounted YS2; a collection of some fifty or so 'extra' pages loaded into the Spectrum and viewed like teletext. This was largely written by then editor Jonathan Nash and regular contributor Steve Anderson, and served as a template for Nash's website, [The Weekly] (no longer updated, although archives can be read). The code had been taken without permission from adventure game company Delta 4's "Sceptical" driver (a similar program), and YS2 referred jokingly to a potential lawsuit in the acknowledgement 'The Sceptical driver is copyright Delta 4, who are really nice and hardly ever sue'. No such lawsuit ever came about of course; YS and Delta 4 had a good relationship, the magazine having published several of its games on the covertape, and reviewed them favourably in its adventure section.
When an editor or member of the writing staff left, the magazine would often concoct fanciful stories surrounding their leaving; so Matt Bielby was carted off to the funny farm after declaring himself to be God, Andy Ide became a Green Party ambassador, and Andy Hutchinson left to design a skate park at Alton Towers. In actuality, the majority of former-YS reviewers went on to work for Amiga Power. YS reviewers were often 'interviewed' in a column at first called 'Joystick Jury', then 'Joystick Jugglers' and finally (when there were fewer games to review and they wanted to introduce the team as a whole, including design staff), 'The Shed Crew' ; a reference to the recurring joke that after the move to Future Publishing, their office was now a garden shed.
Like most similar magazines, Your Sinclair used a percentage scale to rate the games it reviewed. The reviewer Jon Pillar embraced both extremes of the review scale, giving Count Duckula 2 a mere 9%, and Mercenary 99%. Games which were scored at more than 90% were awarded YS's coveted "Megagame" status, but this was undermined slightly when Duncan MacDonald gave his own deliberately bad Sinclair BASIC creation, Advanced Lawnmower Simulator, the status in a moment of surreality. Reader games were also reviewed for a while in the "Crap Games Corner".
The Tipshop contained all the tips and cheats, and spawned its own book, the YS Tipshop Tiptionary. Dr. Berkmann's Clinic (renamed The YS Clinic With Dr. Hugo Z Hackenbush after Marcus Berkmann left to go freelance) provided solutions to reader's gaming problems, more often than not solved by Richard Swann. "Program Pitstop" contained type-in programs, and was the last column of its kind, the one remaining remnant of an era when magazines didn't contain reviews of games, but program listings. Spec Tec and its descendant, Spec Tec Jr, were where all the technical queries went, but even these were typically written in the style of a Philip Marlowe monologue.
Where are they now?
Today it is rare to find the YS writers in the mainstream press, although many of them continue to work in the magazine industry as freelancers.
- Marcus Berkmann writes for Private Eye, The Oldie and The Spectator and has published several books.
- Dave Golder was the editor of SFX magazine until 2005.
- Stuart Campbell continued to work for Amiga Power and other magazines, before going to work for Sensible Software as a designer. He recently created the [World of Stuart] site, a cross between a blog and a portfolio of his work for potential employers.
- Matt Bielby launched a number of magazines for Future and other publishers, including SFX, Total Film, ''.net and Nuts.
- Teresa 'T'zer' Maughan has written a number of pop books, and worked on Star Pets magazine.
- Jonathan Davies, a staff writer and regular contributor, went on to edit Amiga Power and PC Gamer, and now runs the [Games Press] website, a PR resource for the games industry.
- Jonathan Nash, YS's last editor, also went on to work for Amiga Power and PC Gamer, and was also responsible for the short-lived satirical webzine The Weekly (see above)
See also
External links
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