My first year at the helm of PCA is an unmitigated success. The team has helped reverse the magazine’s fortunes. In a declining market, we’ve bucked the trend and grown circulation by 20% to over 40,000 readers per issue, and grown our subscriber base to 12,000. We’ve also deliver over £1 million in profit to Future’s coffers, making us one of the company’s top 10 most profitable titles, a feat we manage to repeat in 2002, despite a more challenging outlook.

After missing out on the PC Answers editor’s chair, I’m offered the chance to make a go of successful spin-off Windows Answers as a regular title, which I’ve edited in a freelance capacity. But after saying yes, the title metamorphises into yet another attempt to crack the beginner’s market: Quick & Easy Windows. All of my team are new to their roles, and despite our best efforts, we struggle to make a success of the fledgling title in what has always been a tough market to crack.

I’m reunited with one of my ST Format editors for my first full-time job as a Production Editor, and she resumes her training of me in her own image, something I’m grateful for to this day (indeed, we continue to work together on other projects).

Cult TV is a departure from what I’ve done before – although I had some experience writing freelance for sister title SFX by this point along with my own love of genre TV. It’s a challenging time, as the magazine fails to deliver a big enough audience despite multiple revamps and political shenanigans. After a change of editor, I start to plot my own way off the magazine…

After ST Format resumes its decline as a consequence of Atari’s withdrawal from the computing market, I eventually get trained up to become the ‘last man standing’ as Editor – or Editorial Controller as per my official title – of the magazine. After a dry run as Acting Editor for issue 80, I’m officially promoted for issue 82. The magazine closes four issues later, with just enough notice (two weeks before deadline) to allow myself and my freelance colleagues to plan a proper farewell in the magazine’s pages.