In 1981, Starburst was on a bit of a roll. Sales were good - safely above 20K - and I felt we could apply the Starburst formula to mainstream movies. The only other film magazine in those pre-Empire days was Film Review, which was sponsored or owned (I forget which) by EMI, so was more of a PR excercise than a consumer magazine.
I wanted to put out a tough, critical magazine that would cover the areas that Starburst couldn't. I took the idea to the Marvel management and got the go-ahead to produce a trial edition of this new magazine.
The cinema Winter Special (at the time I thought the lower-case "c" on cinema was classy) came out at the end of 1981 and sold very well indeed. So well that my department was immediately ordered to produce cinema on a monthly schedule.
At the time this seemed like a terrific opportunity. I was even allowed to hire another editor. So I turned to my old friend Frances Lynn, who'd been gossip columnist on David Bailey's magazine, Ritz.

Frances came in a couple of days a week and between us, we set the Starburst team of writers to work producing the copy for cinema.
For the first two or three issues, things were going quite well, but the strain was starting to show on the design team. I had Steve O'Leary and Rahid Khan splitting their time between Starburst and Doctor Who magazines. But the workload imposed by another regular monthly was just too much.
I went to the management and asked them another designer. I was told that once cinema proved itself, then I could indeed have another designer.
I muddled along for another couple of issues, but I could see the strain was beginning to affect Starburst and Doctor Who magazines as well. Enough was enough.
I went to the MD, Brian Babani, and asked him which of the three magazines was making the least money. I was told that cinema had that honour.
"Cancel it!," I said. "Or all three will go down the pan."