Leigh Loveday's Own Special Page... (direct from Port Talbot)
Leigh Loveday must surely be one of the most strange people to send in letters to Your Sinclair. He/she has sent in many letters on a wide variety of subjects, from that of the true identity of the wooden woodpecker bookend that came to life on TV's Bagpuss. Was his name Professor Yackle or was it Professor Yaffle? The truth is, it seemed, that it was actually Professor Yapple. Other weird letters ranged from the one-liner Who buys Big Fun singles? to a Star-Letter winning piece of doggerel on the subject of the Post Office's new time travel mailing system whereby you can send letters through time. One classic item from the realms of the Small Print section, begging Terry Venables not to sell out to Alan Sugar. "Cor Blimey, Mr Venables, Guv'nor", the letter said. "Don't go sellin' out to Amstrad, or we'll 'ave that bleedin' Gazza all over the Speccy."
Leigh rose to prominence after submitting the YS Complete Guide To Everything, which was a list of every game ever reviewed in YS, compiled "because I was bored in Philosophy." The legendary document, running to 20 sides of tiny handwriting, was typed in as the basis of the coincidentally similarly-named YS Complete Guide To Everything, which was to feature capsule reviews of all of the games. This epic project was abandoned when, with about 13 days to go before the issue deadline, Steve Anderson, JD and I (Jonathan Nash) had managed to write 30,000 words and still only reach D. Leigh's list was thus bunged in as it stood, illustrated with a handful of the completed reviews and lots of photos of Diana Rigg (we couldn't take screenshots because most of the games were in Jon North's attic: see JON NORTH), and entirely missing the issue with the Jack the Nipper 2 wobbly door-hanger thing because I'd forgotten Leigh mentioning he didn't have the ish and I'd have to be sure to fill in the blanks from the office copy. Leigh's tremendous archivey efforts led to his appearance as one of the last new Joystick Jugglers, reviewing, among others, Superted and The Official Father Christmas Simulator (in June). Bizarrely, these were used on Leigh's CV when he was applying to be a camp counseller in the US. (He got the job.) Leigh now works for Rare. (He got the job.) (Hence the phrase, "Leigh now works for Rare.")
Leigh recently had some competition, Stuart N Hardy, but not for the letters page in YS. (Despite the fact we were informed that "It is unfair to compare Leigh's prodigious letter-writing with Stuart N Hardy's, as Leigh is funny while Hardy badly needs throwing down stairs.". We don't care, however, as there simply isn't a better way to link in Hardy)