Are the YS writers still "around"?

[Lee Bee]

Just wondering if any of the YS staff were still "around", or have ever dropped in to Speccy forums? I found this Joystick Jugglers site, but it's ancient!

[ANDREWRYALS]

David McCandless

https://informationisbeautiful.net/about/

[ANDREWRYALS]

Graham Mason is on Facebook.

[worcestersource]

Rich Pelley pops up in The Guardian on occasion.

[worcestersource]

I’ve met Mike Goldsmith a few times in a former career. He was one of the publishers at Future and I recognised his name because I used to read absolutely everything in YS - even the credits and ABC. He obviously knew a lot of the old YS crew and we had a nice chat about the magazine.

[Vampyre]

Well there was one on here recently until he flounced off in a spectacular huff because someone dared to criticise him. You know, the same thing he's made a career out of over the last 30 years.

[Lee Bee]

Interesting!

I’ve met Mike Goldsmith a few times in a former career. He was one of the publishers at Future and I recognised his name because I used to read absolutely everything in YS - even the credits and ABC. He obviously knew a lot of the old YS crew and we had a nice chat about the magazine.

That's cool!

Well there was one on here recently until he flounced off in a spectacular huff because someone dared to criticise him. You know, the same thing he's made a career out of over the last 30 years.

Oh, are we talking about a certain Scottish "reverend"? Fascinating. I'm not terribly familiar with his background. I knew he'd done Amiga journalism but didn't know he was also around in the Speccy days.

[RWAC]

Oh, are we talking about a certain Scottish "reverend"? Fascinating. I'm not terribly familiar with his background. I knew he'd done Amiga journalism but didn't know he was also around in the Speccy days.

He was responsible for Your Sinclair's top 100 Spectrum game list.

[RWAC]

I think Marcus Berkmann writes for the Daily Mail.
How the mighty have fallen. It's quite sad really.

[ANDREWRYALS]

Jon North has not been around for years altough he did make a brief appearence on some of the forums. He'd had a daughter last time I head or spoke to him but that was years ago.

[ANDREWRYALS]

Teresa Maughan, T'Zer, now retired ???

https://uk.linkedin.com/in/teresamaughan

[8BitAG]

Mike Gerrard is still an award winning travel & drinks writer and occasional novelist.

[ANDREWRYALS]

Mike Gerrard, don't you mean Ekim Drarreg?

[Lee Bee]

I think Marcus Berkmann writes for the Daily Mail.
How the mighty have fallen. It's quite sad really.

I'm certainly no fan of tabloid newspapers, but, logically, I wouldn't have thought it an indictment against a journalist for his work to merely appear in a poor-quality publication. I'd love to have a column in a bad newspaper! What a great opportunity to reach, reform and enlighten an ill-informed readership? Otherwise, you're just "preaching to the choir".

[PeteProdge]

Rich Pelley pops up in The Guardian on occasion.

He contacted me last year or the year before for an article. Nowt to do with the Speccy or anything else with retrogaming, it was concerning one of my other interests. Quite a jaw dropper to receive an email from him, I think it was for the Observer (effectivelly 'The Guardian On Sunday') and I resisted dropping in a YS reference in my reply, just gave him the info he needed.

Well there was one on here recently until he flounced off in a spectacular huff because someone dared to criticise him. You know, the same thing he's made a career out of over the last 30 years.

Both his high-profile (blue-tick verified) Twitter presences got kicked off the platform some years back, although he has steathily returned as @RetroBoxing, having to be low key (Twitter's current T&Cs state that once you are banned, you are not to return and if you do, you'll get banned again*, as Britain First discovered this weekend) but still... ah, you know. It's not a pleasant timeline, I'll leave it there.

* = Though if new owner Elon Musk (producer of questionable EVs) has his way,

I think Marcus Berkmann writes for the Daily Mail.
How the mighty have fallen. It's quite sad really.

Marcus Berkmann is a friend of a friend of mine, and he does not care one jot for the Daily Mail's politics. Said friend has also had stuff published in that paper and a few other iffy papers (as have I on one occasion!), so it's not like he's part of the staff aiming to rile up the Angry Retired Colonel readership.

Teresa Maughan, T'Zer, now retired ???

https://uk.linkedin.com/in/teresamaughan

Aw, T'zer made it to the BBC News a couple of years back in the pandemic, as the scientific research organisation she now works for was being targeted by vicious moronic COVID-sceptical conspiracy theorists. Here's the report, with a photo of how she looks now - not that different! When you're signed into LinkedIn, it shows she still works there, if you're viewing the URL without being signed in, it shows her previous job so that gives the false impression she retired.

Phil South
...is on Facebook because I sometimes see him commenting in the Facebook group for The Other Place. Or was it Spectrum For Everyone? I forget. Hopefully the latter.

Duncan McDonald

Alas, this one's a tragedy. Duncan passed away in 2017 and news of that only hit the retrogaming community in 2020. His post-YS career had him at Zero (basically a 16-bit generation version of YS), then took him to the world of PC gaming, with a stint on PC Zone where he created the oddball character Culky and had that Charlie Brooker as a colleague. Alas, after that, he remained without much work, living on the dole in a flat in a seaside town and cutting himself off from the world of magazines and indeed, pretty much everyone he knew. You can buy South Coast Diaries a book compiled from articles he wrote for website seethru.co.uk.

Kati Hamza

Before YS, she had a stint on Zzap 64! (basically Newsfield's quite successful attempt to do a Commodore-flavoured Crash) and did Adventure Trail in Crash. I mention this because she and Zzap writer Gordon Houghton (along with another Zzap writer) all got fired from Newsfield as they had displeased the management. In 2000, her and Gordon started a family.

[Lee Bee]

Thanks, Pete, that is a brilliant update!

vicious moronic COVID-sceptical conspiracy theorists.

Off-topic:
I personally have no interest in "Covid", and have never understood why such a trivial issue gained so much attention. Yeah, it killed many, as does the flu, and other viruses. But I barely gave it a moment's thought. I truly don't get why so many people keep talking about it like it's some life-changing event that shook society.

But I do want to warn against the growing stigmatisation of "conspiracy theories". Yes, the world is full of crazy, absurd theories, many of which are laughably untrue. But that doesn't mean NO such theory can possibly be true. The notion of powerful men conspiring for evil is not only a possibility, but a reality, which I know from first-hand experience. (I will not expose nor disclose any information about them or their schemes, here or anywhere, ever, other than the fact that they absolutely do exist, with a huge, global presence.)

They've already successfully banned conspiracy theories from their media platforms—no doubt creating a few outlandish conspiracy videos of their own, to help legitimise their ban of all such videos. (Note that UFO/alien videos are still very much allowed, and always will be, despite being far less plausible! Misdirection and distraction are always welcome!)

But recently, I've noticed these men have launched a new media campaign attacking "conspiracy theorists". The campaign attempts to stigmatise their opponents by promoting the idea that: "No group of human being have ever, nor could ever, conspire for evil, and anyone who even considers the possibility of any kind of 'conspiracy' is an irrational fool who must be persecuted, silenced, and ostracised from society."

This outrageous affront to logic and intelligence is even being peddled now in the scientific community, which is alarming! I urge people not to buy into it. Yes, a lot of "conspiracy theories" are crazy, many more are simply untrue. But we ought to be careful not to denounce ALL theorists, because not only is that illogical, it's playing into the hands of those who are truly calling the shots. And they're laughing at you for denying them. (It's known as "duper's delight".)

[PeteProdge]

The first person I knew who got COVID, died from it, and he was only a few years older than me. I caught COVID for the first time, this summer, got over it fairly rapidly but three weeks later got reinfected (from another variant) in August for a longer time and I've been suffering intense headaches/migraines since then, which have recently began to fade away. I've done alright compared to some others I know, but I've had a couple of months in a very low mood and my mental health has suffered. I'm just about getting back to normal. I think I'll be fully recovered a few weeks from now, but this very much IS a life-changing event for society and not "just a heavy cold" or "like the flu". I've gone through colds and flu, I'll take either of those over another bout of COVID-19.

Governments lying to their people? Of course it's happened, as anyone who knows the phrases 'Reefer Madness'; 'Duck And Cover' or 'Weapons Of Mass Destruction' (or indeed that 'Special Military Occupation to liberate...' *sighs*).

That's why it's important to shine a light on REAL injustices by using proper evidence, solid revelations, and not arguments that result in bleating "dO yOuR rEsEaRcH" and the outright condemnation of "MAINSTREAM MEDIA!".

The government doesn't have a monopoly on misinformation, loads of ordinary people are involved in that, many unwittingly strengthening it because they've fallen for it. All kinds of guff out there from Kanye West; Andrew Tate and those people who say "the C64 was the best computer ever".

Back to YS, and as I like to remind my SFX-reading C64-loving friend, YS's Dave Golder essentially created SFX within the pages of YS, with Killer Kolumn From Outer Space. He's now a novel author and freelance writer

Matt Bielby has, in recent years, written for local magazine Bath Life and regional food magazine Crumbs.

[R-Tape]

Off-topic:

Very interesting thread you've started here Lee. Can we make sure we stay ON topic from here please.

[Lee Bee]

Sorry Dave, apologies!

And thanks Pete for the fascinating info! (And just to clarify, what I said above was not about governments, it was about the men with the TRUE power.)

[merman]

I enjoyed Marcus’s book Brain Men, on the history of quizzes.
And I am pitching an interview with Phil South to Retro Gamer.

[8BitAG]

Phil was kind enough to give Mark Hardisty an interview for issue 3 of the Classic Adventurer too...
http://classicadventurer.co.uk/
...although that was largely focussed on his adventure writing exploits.

[jdanddiet]

I caught up with Snouty (Phil South), Teresa and Rich Pelley for a feature on Eurogamer on YS a couple years ago.
Couldn't track down those lovebirds Rachael and Gwyn though...

[Vampyre]

Whenever I see the name Rich Pelley pop up I'm not really reminded of YS but the time a doctor said he could well have killed himself by eating huge Christmas dinners twelve days in a row. I think he did it for one of those lad-mags that were so common in the 90s and early 2000s.

[Mpk]

What's Kamikazi Bear up to, that's what I want to know.

[clebin]

What's Kamikazi Bear up to, that's what I want to know.