True Stories

AP01 to AP65

The umbrella title for AP's news and previews section which (except for the coverdisk pages) opened the mag, the inherent dullness of news and previews countered with funny scepticism plus the ingenious deployment of swiftly famous supporting features, of which it has been said.

True Stories highlights are necessarily limited to single entries - a particularly dextrous wriggle out of the unavailability of a programmer during the time when every preview had to have a "THE DEVELOPER SPEAKS" section even though approximately none of them would (to us), for example, or a masterful skein of pop music references in a bit about a plug-in 3D hat or something - but one mini-series stands out as neatly making a fist of AP's mightiness and punching it into a cad's ganglion.

This was the trio of ads in AP43 for AP's SINISTER BESUITED PAYMASTERS' new mags that month. We were COMPELLED BY EXECUTIVE ORDER to carry these nudely blatant plugs as "news" items but, with the tiniest flick of a single barbered brow, gentleman editor Jonathan Davies applied linguistic judo to UPEND THE FOOTPAD OF FLAGRANCY. The "news" items accordingly resembled scripts for television advertisements, presenting the IMPOSED FACTS in the guise of (a) quaking children taught a special song by a pale-eyed clown; (b) a contest of washing powders; and (c) a slimming fable in which a passing man, realising his dilemma in being caught on camera in the background of the scene, elects to "gather up his dog and run into the sea, not stopping until the waters cover his head."

The three mags were expansive successes. We just don't know our own strength.