Readers who did not stop buying AP after issue thirty-one will know well the Poppy Game Insult To Our War Dead story. Alerted by an ad for the mag as part of Future's FES bumph in another newspaper, the Daily Star despatched a crack team of reporters to beard Stuart in his lair, snap an atmospherically surly photograph that subsequently appeared with almost (but not quite) as much of the top of his head missing as in AP2's, interview him ruthlessly and get a rented quote from famously impartial Menzies Campbell MP.

Faced with the Star's campaigning journalism and a lawsuit from the Royal British Legion powerfully affirming their legal rights over the use of the image of a wild flower, AP's publishers decided not to fight the action - which would have fatally delayed the release of the issue - but instead to quietly alter the cover. Wise and sensible? Provocatively weak? Forestalling an injurious rift, Colin The Publisher selflessly united opinion on the swap as hateably limp by knocking up the replacement at the last possible moment, running in during lunch and jamming a blobby brown screenshot of a level map on the page under the words "THIS IS IT!" and sending it directly to the printers. Oddly, the spine line, "OOH, FAYE DUNAWAY!" was changed by the crusading gnome to "WAR HAS NEVER BEEN SO MUCH FUN", a phrase specifically highlighted in the Star's story as particularly offensive.

Protestingly blanked out with a "Censored" sign in that month's news story on the affair, the original cover remained unseen until AP52's Back Page, Save The AP Archives. Tragically, a sizing error meant the sides of the picture were lost, and, at the moment, this is the only version of the poppy cover available to you, our readers.

The single extant cromalin of the original cover now hangs, framed, on Stuart's wall. We must remember to pull it off in a shower of plaster and scan it properly.