I've already mentioned that my reason for buying LOOT in the first
place was to sell my crappy Commodore 64 computer, with an ancient
dialect of the programming language BASIC, to help raise funds to buy
a decent computer with a modern version of BASIC. It took more than
one ad in LOOT to sell it. The ads were free and LOOT published only
one edition per week, which cost 50p, so I started buying it
regularly. On the front page, there was Personal Messages section
100. This was a forum where anyone could advertise, sometimes or
usually under a nickname, and have messages published about various
things, although there was a lot of censorship. After a few months, I
decided to launch a campaign to become some kind of celebrity, so
then I wrote some ads with the nickname IWETEC. One the ads explained
that IWETEC stood for I Will Escape To the European Continent. I also
had some ads which were a campaign called AASA (Anti Anglo Saxon
Attitudes), instructing people to more outgoing, start lots of
conversations with strangers, conversations on trains, etc, etc. LOOT
became a big part of my social life, which was seriously lacking at
the time, due to constant changes in music and fashion, cliques, etc.
I was excited by the early LOOT Nights Out (LNO's) with the chance of
meeting absolutely anyone from any kind of background, instead of a
clique. The first LNO was held at The Production Village, Kilburn,
then LOOT organised a couple of LNO's themselves, but I can't
remember where they were. LOOT staff, such as Ken and Diane turned up
at early LNO's, but later on no LOOT staff came along.