From the age of eight when I discovered smash hits (1982) to around my twenties I bought most UK music publications at one time or another. I still have scrapbooks of cuttings and NME covers from the late eighties/early nineties.

I bought the NME, Melody Maker, Record Mirror, Select, The Face and Vox amongst others I've probably forgotten. Vox and Select had the best compilation tapes and CDs, as far as I was concerned. If it appealed to me I'd buy it. Even a short lived one, I think, called Off-beat.

If it appealed to me I'd buy it from the local newsagent on high street or the WH Smith's in the town centre. Who could forget 'Smash hits rival' No 1. To me the journalists on Smash Hits and the NME were just as important as the artists I converted.

The mechanics of writing have always fascinated me. I bet I wasn't the only one who harboured dreams of being a music journo but was, in reality, a bit rubbish. These days I read online like everyone else and sometimes printed editions of Vogue or Cosmopolitan.

It's never going to be quite the same as those heady days. Time moves on and you can't live in the past. Thank you if you've taken the time to read this thread and got to the end.