I am a forty-year-old, disabled father of two school-age children. May I, through your magazine, as someone who is neither a games freak, nor a schoolchild with access to £1,000 of BBC equipment, speak out against the seemingly endless stream of sarcasm, sneering, and general slagging off of Sir Clive Sinclair.

Sinclair's ZX81 gave me, and thousands like me, the only chance most of us would ever have to buy our own computer.

I bought mine about two years ago; an *excellent* manual, leads for TV and cassette, 16K expansion pack, transformer, and free Pacman, for the unbelievable price of £45.

Sinclair, single-handed, frightened other computer firms into lowering prices.

I know that the ZX81 is crude and slow, but where else would hundreds of thousands of people like me ever have found the chance to find out that computers are fun? From Acorn?

I now own a better computer, but I know that I would never have had a chance to start, had it not been for Sinclair. Like Henry Ford, Clive Sinclair took an expensive, wealthy person's plaything, and gave it to the masses.

There are more computers, per head of population, in this country than anywhere else in the world. The computer and software industries employ thousands, and make millions.

So, please just now and then could someone say "thank you" to the man?

P. J. Long, Bedminster, Bristol