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The Wonderful World Of Letters Pages

Norman Tebbit's Dead Serious Corner

I really miss good letters pages. Back in the day, Your Sinclair - the greatest gaming magazine of all time - had the best letters pages of any magazine ever. It was glorious, always the first pages I'd read. From an agony aunt column of pure spite (Ooh, You Poor Dear) to the Kindly Leave The Stage jokes section, it had everything. It had Doodlebugs, where readers sent in drawings. It had the Trainspotter Award where readers attempted to find mistakes in previous editions of the magazines, that somehow proved to never be mistakes, it had a special section dedicated to the "hatstand" letters they'd receive from around the world.

And it had Small Print, a section that extracted single lines from longer letters, or simply very short letters, and mocked them - a tradition you'll see continues to this day in PC Gamer, although STUPID AND WRONGLY not being called "Small Print" any more, despite a real actual shouting fight I had with the editor who changed it.

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