Pete Shaw

Pete Shaw is a British author, broadcaster, programmer and theatrical producer.

Early life Shaw attended school in Stanwell, Middlesex. While at Stanwell Secondary School, he was introduced by a school friend to Tim Hartnell, the co-owner of Interface Publication, the other owner being his school friend's mother, Sue North.

His first published computer program was The Elephant's Graveyard, written for the Sinclair ZX81 and published in the magazine ZX Computing in August 1982.

Career Shaw's first book, Games for your ZX Spectrum, followed at the end of 1982 and was published by Virgin Books in conjunction with Interface Publications and was an early title in a series of Games For Your ... books published by Virgin. Shaw himself wrote three more books for the series, including Games for your Oric, More Games for your Oric and Games for your Sinclair QL. Shaw also co-wrote two books designed to teach the adventure game genre, Creating Adventures on your ZX Spectrum (Interface Publications, 1983) and Creating Adventure on your BBC Micro (Interface Publications, 1985).

Shaw's books mainly comprised Type-In program listings for home computers, which were designed to teach-as-you-type, since the programs contained many comments on how the listing worked.

Before he even left school, Shaw was a regular contributor to ZX Computing and Home Computer Weekly, and on leaving Stanwell Secondary School he turned down a sought after place at Isleworth Art College to work full-time for the newly launched computer magazine Your Spectrum.

It was at Your Spectrum (which later was relaunched as Your Sinclair ) that Shaw picked up the nickname Troubleshootin' Pete due to his regular column in the magazine in which he would answer reader questions that had been posed over the YS Helpline. Shaw's official title at Your Sinclair was Editorial Assistant when he first joined, but he was promoted to Deputy Editor within a year of joining the staff.

Your Sinclair was published by Dennis Publishing, and Shaw also contributed to other Dennis magazines including Your 64, Computer Shopper and MacUser.

While still Deputy Editor of Your Sinclair, Shaw also contributed to a weekly Capital Radio children's show called XYZ on Air, broadcast every Sunday and hosted by DJ Kelly Temple. The show was an eclectic mix of music, interviews, features and the 'Computerworld' slot hosted by Pete Shaw. It was Shaw's association with Capital Radio that brought about, The Capital Radio Book of Computers and Simple Programming (NeatQuest, 1985), co-written with Kelly Temple and Your Spectrum's original Editor, Roger Munford.

Before 1985 was out, Shaw had written at least eleven computer technical books, published around the world and in several languages.