Jonathan Nash

I distinctly remember this chap, because he complained using his full name and threatened to stop buying the mag unless we treated readers with more respect. The reply was "Then DON'T WRITE USING JUST AN INITIAL. You moron."

At the last moment I changed it to "You idiot" because he didn't particularly deserve any nastiness. He was, in fact, an idiot rather than a moron.

But anyway.

It suddenly occurred to me that, although often discussed in the office, perhaps AP had never set down the rule about not using initials, and that I'd been tremendously unfair.

But no. In AP33 (not the first, nor the last issue to contain it) I found How To Write A Letter To AMIGA POWER.

Letters Including These Things Will Only Give Stuart A Headache, Making Him Irritable, Forcing A Heavy Cloud Of Gloom To Float Over The AP Offices, point four:

Signing your name with only an initial, like you were writing to your MP or something. We hate this, and feel that anyone who is this stuck up and posh deserves scorn and castigation to be poured onto them. We will therefore continue our campaign of giving them a stupid name beginning with the initial they consider oh-so-important until this practice is wiped off the face of the Earth.

And there you go. Bad luck, Mr Burley! You idiot.