J Nash

I loved The Bottom Line.

While on Game Zone I'd been assigned a review of the reviews of the year - the past 12 months' games in Bottom Line-style summaries. Obviously I poutingly disagreed with nearly all of the reviews, so rewrote them to reflect my opinions - "That's what we thought then, here's what we think now" - that type of thing.

Arriving at AP and, as new bug, being given the horrible workaday bits everyone hated, like The Bottom Line and the Subs Letter, it occurred to me that I could outmanoeuvre the traditionally accompanying sloggy work by making it all up to please myself.

Equally importantly, if poor old Sue had (virtually) to redesign The Bottom Line every month so it looked exactly the same because of the tiniest, tiniest change regardless, it didn't matter how long my mini-re-reviews were.

Accordingly, if you read The Bottom Line from AP40 onwards, you'll find me discreetly rationalising and then, within about three issues, blatantly rewriting AP history whenever I disagreed with it, faithfully recording the original percentage mark then investing enormous paragraphs in explaining my view of the game instead, and usurping the star system to re-evaluate where required.

This was excellent fun (I didn't even have to take screenshots; Sue would drop in one from the original review page) and I was perfectly safe as I knew nobody except the readers could stand looking at the eight pages at the back of the mag, such was its powerful resonance of misery-filled wasted effort during the time they'd been made to do it on their way up the AP ladder.

This was also where I deeply irritated ("Michael Jackson" - Ed) by referring to every single football management title as a "footy manner" or "footy manny game." It was only going to be once until I happened to learn they genuinely hated the thoughtlessly improvised term. Natch.

Later, Steve Frrr, making final adjustments to Sue's tear-streaked pages in his capacity as Prod Ed, started changing the changed bits to reflect his own opinions. This was the eighth best thing ever.