James Attwood

Tenure: AP40
Designation: Original Wee Work Experience Lackey

A SHOCKING EXPOSÉ INTO THE LIFE OF AMIGA POWER'S ORIGINAL (AND BEST) WORK EXPERIENCE KID

Hello, I am James Attwood, but you probably know me as that ("Wee Work Experience Lackey" - Ed) who put six exclamation marks into the single-page review of Clockwiser in AP40. Fear not, I have learned the error of my ways.

I was AMIGA POWER's patented-original- work-experience-kid-a-matic^TM and was naturally the best work experiency lackey to be indoctrinated into the cult of AP. Probably. Being the patented-original- work-experience-kid-a-matic^TM, the staff of AMIGA POWER did not realise the potential for giving an enthusiastic, and unpaid, worker all the crap jobs to do, such as making tea and cleaning shoes with a mixture of spit and polish, applied via a tongue. Lucky me.

So, when I arrived on a generally sunny morning, the staff knew not what to do with me. First, they made ME tea, clearly failing to grasp the primary duty of work experience kids. Then, they gave me something FUN to do, ie, a computer game (the aforementioned Clockwiser) to sit around and play with all morning. Thinking about my dear classmates stuck on work experience at local offices and accountancies, a smug grin appeared on my face. Come Monday afternoon, I was sitting down writing a review of Clockwiser. I was never sure whether this was because they thought I had potential as a computer games journalist, or whether they just did not want to play any game that looked as crap as Clockwiser. Clearly, my review was something of a success, as to this day, four years, two-and-a-half weeks later, I have never seen the game on sale in any shop anywhere. Ever.

After this promising start, I relished the prospect of doing more fun and entertaining stuff for the remainder of the week, only to find that all the work ran out. Yes, it was my misfortune to visit AMIGA POWER on a week when the amount of new, finished games arriving was so low, Jonathan Davies, then editor, actually considered reviewing unfinished games JUST to claim an exclusive. (or EXCLUSIVE, for any former readers of The One).

The rest of the week was spent celebrating my fifteenth birthday (I was given a Cannon Fodder T-shirt, which I unsubtly wore later that year upon a visit to a Second World War grave in France - eat that, Royal British Legion), placing my Clockwiser review in the pages of AMIGA POWER, attending a posh editorial meeting reviewing AMIGA POWER issue 39 (I proved invaluable in my constructive criticism as well. When asked what I thought about AMIGA POWER's star review system, I commented "I like it." When asked about AMIGA POWER's layout, I commented "I like it." You kind of get the idea) and playing a batch of SEUCK games which arrived. Now that hurt. Amazingly, I only answered the phones once, and made one batch of tea, which I spectacularly messed up, failing to deliver the requisite amount of milk and two sugar teas.

Since AMIGA POWER, I have completed two more periods of work experience, at a local publishing company and at the Weston-super-Mare Mercury, a crappy local paper in which the week's top story when I arrived was how the Worle school fete had been a great success. Clearly, my work experience life has gone downhill faster than a skier with a spear wedged up his bottom.

On a completely different note, I'd like to thank everyone involved in AP2 for resurrecting a magazine that transcended the success of the plaform it was based on. I believe that AP2 was the inevitable response to Future's ill-advised and evil axing of AMIGA POWER. Reading that final issue, I could almost hear it utter, Ben Kenobi style, that "if you kill me, I will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine."

AMIGA POWER to the people. Or something like that.

Oh, can I have my Zool 2 T-shirt now, please? It's been four and a bit years. (No. - Ed.)