Anniversary Update

History man Mel Croucher – who’s been with us since the very first issue – looks back on the birth of the publishing phenomenon that is Computer Shopper

- Mel Croucher

MY PHONE RANG. It was a heavy old phone, with twisted wires, a handset for collecting spit and earwax, and a metal bell that went ring-ring. A voice said, “Do you know who Felix Dennis is?” Yes, I knew who Felix Dennis was; he was a successful publisher who had been imprisoned for “conspiracy to deprave and corrupt the morals of the Young of the Realm”. My kind of guy. The voice went on, “Do you want to help set up a thing for Felix Dennis?” Yes, I wanted to help set up a thing for Felix Dennis. My caller said, “Meet me in the Marquis of Granby,” then hung up.

The Marquis of Granby is a London pub, famous for its literary clientele. TS Eliot had emphysema there, George Orwell had tuberculosis there, Dylan Thomas had delirium tremens there, and a jolly man called Graeme summoned me there to plan the launch of a new magazine. We had worked together before on magazines with daft names like Crash, Ace and Zzap that were aimed at people who liked computer games, but this was to be an altogether more serious project.

Graeme used the bar-top as his lectern and wrote with a fat pencil on sheets of lined paper. He declared his mission was to create something that would be “best for price, best for advice, and like nothing you’ve ever seen before”. His gameplan was to take a bunch of people who loved computing but were not professional journalists, and mix them up with freelance old tarts like me. He believed this mixture of smouldering anoraks and cynical hacks would result in a great new magazine, and the magazine he wanted to create would be called Computer Shopper.

NAME OF THE GAME