Your Sinclair | Code Like It's 198x

Your Sinclair, usually just YS, was a British monthly magazine about the ZX Spectrum. It ran for 93 issues, from January 1986 to September 1993, and it is remembered less for any single review than for how it sounded. Its last editor, Jonathan Nash, summed up the house style in the final issue: “nobody gives a tinker’s trouser if you stick to the subject or not. Mentioning the game in a review is seen as a sort of added bonus. YS is all about being funny.”

The jokes sat on top of a working magazine: reviews, tips, maps, programming help and, from 1989, a game tape on every cover. YS outlived both of its big rivals. CRASH ended in April 1992 and Sinclair User in April 1993, leaving YS as the last of the three to close.

Fast facts

Publisher: Sportscene Specialist Press, London, from issue 1; Dennis Publishing, at the same address, from issue 17 (May 1987); Future Publishing, Bath, from issue 52 (April 1990).
First issue: January 1986, on sale 2 December 1985. Last issue: September 1993 (issue 93).
Editors: Kevin Cox (issues 1–13), Teresa Maughan (14–41), Matt Bielby (42–62), Andy Ide (63–70), Andy Hutchinson (71–79), Linda Barker (80–88) and Jonathan Nash (89–93).
Cover price: £1.60 “with Full Price Game” in May 1989; £1.70 by March 1990; £2.95 for the final issue.
Top award: the Megagame, a name carried over from Your Spectrum.

From Your Spectrum to Your Sinclair

YS did not start from nothing. Its predecessor, Your Spectrum, came from the same office at 14 Rathbone Place in London and already called itself “YS”. Its final issue, in December 1985, announced that the magazine would grow to over 100 pages, that “our name is changing to Your Sinclair”, and that “the QL and 128K Spectrum get the YS treatment too”. A coupon for the newsagent promised that the first issue would be on sale on 2 December 1985 “with a free game cassette on the front cover”.

That first issue, edited by Kevin Cox, duly carried a free copy of Firebird’s Rasputin. In 1993 the magazine’s own history of itself, written by long-serving contributor Jonathan Davies, explained the rename: by the end of 1985 Your Spectrum had decided that the QL was “the machine of the future” and that the new 128K Spectrum “might not even be called a Spectrum”, and it did not want to be left out. The same history noted what changed inside: fewer hex dumps and programming features, and “loads of games! And proper reviews of them, too”.

The publisher’s name changed in May 1987, but the address and the people did not. From issue 17 the statement of publication names Dennis Publishing, still at 14 Rathbone Place, with the same publisher, Roger Munford, as before. Felix Dennis’s name is on the masthead by 1990.

The voice

The humour ran through every page. Staff wrote under nicknames and acted in photo love stories, and readers who caught the magazine’s mistakes, such as a photograph printed upside down, received a “Trainspotter Award”, a custom brought over from Your Spectrum. Even the sale of the magazine became a joke. When Future Publishing bought YS in 1990, the magazine told readers that Future’s chairman had only been trying to buy a second-hand Sinclair C5 from Exchange And Mart, dialled a wrong number, and found himself owning a magazine instead.

The closing announcement in August 1993 kept up the same tone. “YS is closing down,” the editor wrote: Your Sinclair was “turning the sign on the door and putting the chairs on the table, or a similar metaphor of your choice”. Subscribers were promised refunds, and readers were invited to send in their “blubby reminiscences” for the farewell issue.

The people

The 1993 history traces the staff year by year. Production Editor Teresa Maughan, known in the magazine as “T’zer”, took over from Kevin Cox in 1987, with Marcus Berkmann as deputy editor and Phil South as technical editor. Phil South had been a contributor since the first issue, and from September 1987 he hosted the Tipshop tips pages. Jonathan Davies hosted Program Pitstop, the programming section.

Matt Bielby became editor in mid-1989, and his time in charge is called, “not without irony”, “the Matt Bielby Golden Age”. Linda Barker joined as a staff writer in 1990 and edited the magazine from August 1992 until she left for a 16-bit magazine in spring 1993. Stuart Campbell reviewed for YS in its later years. Mike Gerrard wrote the adventure column in the early years.

Tipshop, Pitstop and the Smash Tapes

Beyond the reviews, YS had regular sections that readers came back to:

Tipshop replaced the earlier Hack Free Zone in September 1987, promising “hints, tips, maps and POKEs, all in one easy-to-swallow capsule”, and launched with an eight-page booklet of tips.
Program Pitstop carried programming tips and readers’ routines, and succeeded Program Power, the pull-out type-in section of the early issues.
Pssst was the news section, as likely to announce new YS T-shirts as the death of the Spectrum +3.

Cover tapes came and went in the early years. From 1989 a “Smash Tape” came with every issue, and later the Smash Tapes grew into 4-Packs, then 6-Packs, then “Magnificent 7s”. By the magazine’s own account, sales peaked in 1988 at 80,368 copies a month.

Bath, and the end

Future moved YS from London to Bath in 1990, into what the staff called “the Shed”. Editors changed quickly after that, and the page count fell: the 1993 history admits that in its last years “YS really was getting dangerously thin”. The last issue, in September 1993, was a 68-page farewell without a cover tape. It carried a reader poll of the best Spectrum games, memories from past staff and a joke about its own price: “£2.95 for a 68-page mag without a covertape may seem a bit steep, but — hey! — remember that… er… hang on. Blimey. It is a bit steep, actually.”

Sources

Your Spectrum issue 21, December 1985: the change of name to Your Sinclair, the plan for over 100 pages, and the newsagent coupon for the first issue “on sale on December 2nd 1985 with a free game cassette”.
Your Sinclair issue 1, January 1986: contents page and staff list (Kevin Cox as editor, Teresa Maughan as production editor, Phil South among the contributors), the free Rasputin cassette, and the statement of publication by Sportscene Specialist Press.
Your Sinclair issue 12, December 1986: Trainspotter Awards to readers. Your Spectrum issue 16, July 1985: a Trainspotter Award for a photograph printed upside down.
Your Sinclair issues 16 and 17, April and May 1987: statements of publication by Sportscene Specialist Press and then Dennis Publishing.
Your Sinclair issue 20, August 1987: next-issue preview with the eight-page Tipshop booklet. Issue 21, September 1987: the first Tipshop, hosted by Phil South. Issue 50, March 1990: Jonathan Davies as Program Pitstop host. Issue 60, December 1990: Pssst news pages on the death of the +3.
Your Sinclair issue 41, May 1989, cover (“£1.60 with Full Price Game”); issue 50, March 1990, cover (£1.70).
Your Sinclair issue 51, March 1990: Felix Dennis on the masthead. Issue 52, April 1990: “The Your Sinclair Sell-Off” and the first statement of publication by Future Publishing, Bath.
Mastheads of Your Sinclair issues 1–93 for the editors’ names and dates.
Your Sinclair issue 92, August 1993: the closure announcement.
Your Sinclair issue 93, September 1993: p. 2, the welcome and the price joke; Jonathan Nash’s farewell; Jonathan Davies, “The YS Story”, pp. 6–9, for the rename, the staff changes, the Smash Tapes, the move to Bath and the circulation of 80,368.