Digitiser

Digitiser was a video games magazine that was broadcast on Teletext in the UK between 1993 and 2003. It originally billed itself as "The World's Only Daily Game Magazine".

The page was launched on 1 January 1993 on page 370 of the Teletext service on ITV before transferring over to Channel 4 later that year. It was updated daily except on Sundays, apart from a nine-month period in 2002 when it went to three days a week, weekends and holidays. It was followed by up to 1.5 million viewers at times. The magazine was notable for its surreal and risqué humour as well as its games coverage.

Digitiser was created by writers Paul Rose and Tim Moore who went by the pseudonyms Mr Biffo and Mr Hairs. They wrote it together for the first four years while Rose wrote more or less solo for the remaining six in a freelance capacity.

Digitiser frequented courted controversy, inspiring criticism both from outside groups and Teletext's own editorial team, who viewed the writers as troublemakers but were unable to axe them due to the magazine's popularity. Pages were often altered without the writers' knowledge, with sub-editors sometimes deleting entire frames of reviews for fear of missing a risqué joke.

On one occasion, a sub-editor, who shortly afterwards was promoted to editorial director of the company, rang Rose to insist he remove a "disgusting" reference to "fingering the index". When Rose pointed out that it was a play on "index finger", and that it had not even dawned on him that it might be considered rude, the up-and-coming sub-editor is alleged to have fallen silent for a few seconds, before insisting that it was still deliberately provocative, and should be deleted. A similar confrontation occurred over a reference to "The three Rs", during which sub-editors believed that - despite Biffo's amused protests to the contrary - the "Rs" part of the phrase was meant to sound a bit like "arse", rather than a reference to the famous educational principle.

Campaigns were even waged to have Digitiser's writing team fired - both within Teletext by its editorial minions, and beyond (by disgruntled Amiga, Sega, Sony, or Nintendo fans, not to mention the staff of Mean Machines and Official Nintendo magazines - whom Digitiser frequently poked fun at). Such reactions merely served to redouble Biffo's resolve to be controversial and edgy, and as he often wrote on the letters pages, Digitiser "hates everyone equally, man".

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