*The section, in which we point out that the only successful top-drawer Brit assassin was John Henry Bellingham (the bloke who shot Prime Minister Spencer Perceval) and invite readers to do their bit by having a crack at a popular celebrity, such as The Pope, had been narrowly okayed by editor Cam as acceptably dodgy before going on holiday. He then rang up down a crackly line a few days later saying he'd changed his mind and it was a bit too erkish, so the final version featured The Pope receiving the AP running gag of "non-fatal wounds," a sensible decision of editorial comport which made it 11.7% funnier.

As it happened, the only complaints we received were about the feature as a whole (ie, because it wasn't about Amiga games) and, in equal number, about the fuzzy Virtual Karting screenshots (caused by a technical fault we apologised for in the review). Go fig.

THE POPE THE BONUS! When The Pope was failing to die, News 24 (fairly hopeless Beeb-backed permanent-news channel on la-di-dah poshboy space television) cleared their schedule to dedicate the entire operation to the breaking story. It almost immediately became apparent that they hadn't the news to fill more than five minutes in any hour (there's only so many ways you can say, "Bob Bloke standing in Rome on a floor looking at a distant window there. So. The Pope. Well. Let's go back to Bob Bloke," really) but couldn't back out in case The Pope keeled over when they were talking about skateboarding ducks or something. Stuart, first out of interest, then obstinacy, then pepper-headed bloody-mindedness, left his telly tuned to News 24 and sat down on a bean bag with attentive eyes to wait for the end of the saga. It took two days.

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