Jonathan Nash

The idea of the Subs Letters was to have something that would in some small way cushion the blow for subscribers of spending £40 to have a year's issues of AP mangled through the letterbox. To this end, each Subs Letter was designed to take as much time as possible to read, with incredibly tiny bits, upside-down bits, photo-story bits, bits ONLY SUBSCRIBERS KNEW, almost unnoticeable composite picture bits and definitely unnoticeable background bits. I don't know if anyone cared, but I liked doing them.

After some initial editing (an early one repeated Stuart's ed letter advice on re-subscribing - don't, but let it lapse then subscribe again so you get another free game - but was brutally censored), I was left alone as no one knew if any subscriber cared, but I clearly liked doing them. Advantageously, I put the lot together myself in the evenings, so did not risk infuriating Art Eds. (Except the time when I had to take Sue's big Mac home over the weekend to complete AP51's Subs Letter, discovering months later that she'd come in especially early Monday morning to carry on with the mag proper, which was, of course, late. Erk.)

I learned a lot from the AP Subs Letters - text below 4-point was illegible on our type of paper, for example, and how Quark Express worked - and regard them fondly, even though I suspect AP's last remaining subscriber died of old age around the time of AP52. But never mind, because I liked doing them.