Lee - that was his name! Cant believe I forgot it in the first place as I pretty much lived in that shop throughougt college!!!
I had a spectrum (in fact I still have it) 128k +2 with the built in tape deck. I used to spend hours learning "basic" which stood me in good stead later on for Pascal/C++
Speaking of the old faithfull Speccy - if anyone has favourite games that they remember, most of them are now available to play online through an internet browser - my favourite game ever is still going and has been taken on as a freeware project, Chaos Battle of the Wizards - best game ever!