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Joystick Jugglers
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Joystick Jugglers
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 Rick Robson | Veteran from the Your Spectrum days, commonly mistaken for Animal from The Muppets. Keeps hamsters, insects and a whole menagerie of other animals in his beard. Reported to the RSPCA about keeping hamsters in his beard, so replaced them with gerbils. Thankful that the RSPCA doesn't know about his trainers... |  Jackie Ryan | Infamously short. So sensitive about her height she always carried a 44 Magnum around the office to convince people that she was really a 6 foot basketball player. She applied for a place in the Harlem Globetrotters, and they put her on their Short list. |
 Richard Blaine | Arcade adventure fan who sends YS his reviews from Casablanca. Also ran the Play By Mail column for a while. Played Bungle in Rainbow. |  Rachael Smith | The "rumpiest gal in Speccy gaming" - the most fancied YS reviewer after T'zer. At the time, going out with Gwyn Hughes. |
 Cliff Joseph | Man of mystery. |  Richard Morris | No relation to Johnny. |
 Gwyn Hughes | Rachael Smith's boyfriend at the time. Welshman. |  Robin Alway | General wheeler-dealer. Became the SAM Surgeon. |
 Marcus Berkmann | Head Over Heels addict, opened the Head Over Heels Clinic, which eventually evolved into a help area for anyone having problems with the latest games. Huge cricket bore. Destroyed his left hand whilst playing cricket, but YS had the technology to repair it. He's now the only person in the country with a Fairy Liquid bottle permanently poking from his sleeve - 65 per cent human, 30 per cent bionic and 5 per cent sticky tape. Simon Bates hater (aren't we all?). Learnt how to bullfight by practicing with rabbits, guinea-pigs, domestic fowl and donkeys. Then ditched bull fighting for hot air ballooning until he nearly killed himself and trying out warplane flying. Fell down the stairs once and got amnesia. "Who am I?" he foolishly asked the YS team. "You're Olga Korbett, the famous defecting Bulgarian gymnast and you're on the run from a KGB snatch squad," they replied. Marcus then legged it out of the door, pausing only to perform a half triple-back pike arabesque en route. | ||
 Jonathan Davies | Orginally co-editor of fanzine Spectacular. Became a traitor when he bought himself an Atari ST (remember those?!!). The man with a name so uncommon that only 34 of them work within a joystick's waggle of Rathbone Towers. Once took up Sumo wrestling. Was given an original pet - Farty the Warthog. Tried to pass him off as a bull to Marcus, but was foiled. "That's not a bull... it's Farty on stilts." Farty died... his last words were "BANG!" and that was it. Now haunted by Farty's ghost. | ||
 Phil South | The infamous sandwhich eater at YS. Wrote the wonderful adventure game "Fish". |  Ciaran Brennan | Memory man - favourite book is "Pi To Three Billion Decimal Places" by Prof Heinz Beans. |
 Mike Gerrard | The regular adventure columnist, and the best of his kind. |  Jon Pillar | Obsessed with private eyes. YS's resident John Major lookalike. |
 Tony Worrall | Originally editor of the fanzine EPROM, he turned professional game reviewer when he joined YS. Assures us that his ears are smaller than that in real life. |  Linda Barker | Rock'n'Roll chick. Inherited the editorship when Andy Hutchinson decided to design a skateboard park in Alton Towers. Bit of a soppy romantic sort of girl. |
 Nat Pryce | Orginally co-editor of fanzine Spectacular. YS's very own hard man, fully equipped with a Billy Idol sneer and a quiff you could build a skyscraper on. Harder than a Terrys chocolate orange. |  David Powell | Programmer who turned his hand to reviewing. Programs huge computers with knobs and lights by day, then tinkers with his rubber keyboard by night. |
 Duncan MacDonald | YS's resident cartoonist and overall strange bloke. Acts out the plot of each one of his cartoons before he draws them. Currently serving five years in Parkhurst. The only reviewer who thinks he's a small village in the Wye valley. Broke the world record for moth-powered flight. Has had many mysterious "sellotape adventures". You don't want to know... |  Sean Kelly | Spoon balancer extraordinaire. Once kidnapped by aliens who wouldn't let him go until he'd taught them his spoon balancing skills. Went on to juggling five Robo Chefs whilst balancing upside-down on a toaster. Not just a balancer, but also a musician - he plays the spoons... Ran out of ideas for tricks and got depressed... until he found a loofer... That provided brief releif, but then hit a rut again... Spent a brief bit of time in Zero magazine. |
 Peter Shaw | Troubleshootin' Pete in the early days, went away for a bit, then came back to do some reviews. |  Ben'n'Skippy | Refugees from Crash. The Spectrum's own Batman and Robin - Ben wears underpants over his strides, and Skippy doesn't wear any underpants at all. |
 David McCandless | Major contributor to YS even before his was employed by them. Master hacker, took over Practical POKEs and Program Pitstop. Nicknamed "Macca", "Fab Macca Wacca" to his friends, and "That git there" by his enemies. |  Richard Pelley | Extremely huge flares wearer. Owner of the Crap Games Corner. Party goer to the extreme and adored by the female readership. Once had difficulties going through Customs with a suitcase full of women's clothes... |
 Matt Bielby | Matt Goss (who he?!) lookalike, causing every girl within visual range to swoon uncontrolably. The CS gas he carried around probably had something to do with that though... Tried to send Jonathan Davies a replacement warthog thru the post, but got a 280,000 quid bill from the Post Office for wrecking their franking machine. Then had a bit of a turn, thinking he was Gadgy The Mutant Ninja Duck, then Lord Beilby. Eventually convinced himself he was God, and had to be taken away. |  David Wilson | Resident YS crooner. Sings when asked. Sings when not asked. Had a "hit song" with Hold My Hand Very Tightly in YS44. Or at least I think that's what they said... Had to pay Roger Whittaker 18 quid in royalties for lifting a bit of whistling from I've Gotta Leave Old Durham Town. As a result, he got a few death threats from "Friends of Roger Whittaker". Had a successful tour around the Outer Hebrides, with 4,000 sheep at each venue. Had his song played on Radio One! Nickname "Whistlin' Rick". |
 Kati Hamza | Relentlessly fickle - gets bored of whatever job she's doing within ten minutes. |  Andy Ide | Jesus impersonator, also a hippy of the highest order. Picked on relentlessly by Matt Beilby, before Matt went a bit gaga and had to be taken away. |
 Paul Laikin | Refugee from the defunct Zero magazine. |  James Leach | Kidnapped from Amstrad Action. Crap at poetry. |
 Andy Hutchinson | Sideways-cap-wearing reject from EMF. Became YS editor after bumping into Andy Ide rehearsing his inaugural Minster for Green Affairs speech. Seriously funky. |  Simon Cooke | SAM and Spectrum programmer extrardinaire. Became Spec Tec Jr when Adam Waring left. Tip for the day: Don't mention the phrase "Statues of Ice"... |
 Trenton Webb | Only joined YS once his Amiga broke down. |  Rebecca Norley | Work experiencer, who was instantly adored by the staff. |
 Steve Anderson | Another prolific letter-writer-turned-columnist. Thinks that sitting on a shelled hard-boiled egg naked is a good way of curing stress. I can tell you for a fact that this does work. Erm, moving on... | ||
 Kevin Cox | Kevin was the first ever editor of Your Sinclair, and kept a very low profile in the mag, restricting himself to the Letters pages and letting his alter-ego of "Tommy Nash" handle the other articles. |  Teresa Maughan | If Matt Bielby was the YS Editor that made all the girls swoon, then T'zer was the female equivalent, attracting sackfuls of fan letters every week. She was the longest reigning editor YS ever had before being promoted to Publisher when Matt took over. She then proceeded to break thousands of hearts when she got married. |  Sara Biggs | The Official YS Gauntlet Addict, confirmed during the YS Coup of '87 when she said she wanted "Lots of reviews of Gauntlet. Features on the playing of Gauntlet. Gauntlet - The Deeper Dungeons, screen by screen." Fortunately Marcus then stepped in by promptly putting a noose around her neck. |  John Minson | Officially he only wrote the nifty Backstabbin' series of articles. Unofficially he was a major Joystick Juggler and master of disguise. Did you know he was writing for both YS and Crash at the same time?! |  Max Phillips | Jack of all trades, from reviewing games, to doing hardware round-ups and writing the brilliant Backlash series of articles. |  Keith Pomfret | YS's roving reporter who covered The Hobbit, Russia's Spectrum clone. |
 Catherine Higgs |
 Robert Corredi |
 Tony Dillon |
 Dave Golder |
 Lesley Quigg |
 Craig Broadbent |
 Stuart Campbell |
 Leigh Loveday |
 Tim Kemp |
 Catherine Peters |
 Colin Campbell |
 Andy Ounsted |
 Tim Blackbond |
 Simon Hindle |
 Phil McCardle |
 Tony Lee |
 Simon Forrester |
Jonathan Nash |
Before anyone could become a YS reviewer, they had to take a secret test. Although everyone had to swear an oath not to reveal it, and also were hypnotised so that they'd forget it, various pieces of information came out. The YS reviewers' secret test they had to take involved a banana, an aardvark, a bicycle chain, a pogo stick, playing R-Type, spoon balancing and moths sellotaped to their forehead.
That probably explained why they were all so well balanced whilst writing for the mag.
All charicatures were done by YS's prolific cartoonist Nick Davies, apart from the following:
Stuart C, Dave G, Craig B and Andy O were done by Andy Ounsted.
Tim K was done by Linda Barker.
Simon H and Leigh L were cut outs from Boy's Own magazine.
Jon P and Phil M did their own.
Jonathan N didn't have one - he reused Jon Pillar's.
That Max Phillips and Sara Biggs are now married to each other?
That Rick Robson was the pen-name of Andy Robson?
That Tommy Nash was actually Kevin Cox?
Well you do now!