Ah, the Rainbow nickname.

Well, back in the dim and distant past, Prestel had live chat. They weren't chat rooms in the way that you and I understand them these days, they were carousels of pages with the newest message overwriting the oldest. About 50 pages total if memory serves me properly.

Prestel used to close for hours every night so that the editors could update it and I remember having contests to be the last/first poster with shut-down in the middle.

I frequented a popular one where nicknames were bestowed by the regulars. There was a Douglas Adams fan named Dentarthurdent and a guy who started every on-line session with a "quote of the day" who was known as The Prof. There was a GP called Doc and lots of travel agents. There was also a lady who was a comforting shoulder at times of trouble who was know as Really Yours Truly. A farmer know as Muckspreader and a car freak called Vroom.

Anyway, I had joined with a user name of some garble I don't remember and I'd begun to design computer art but, at that time, the hardware was very limited in the number of colours it could display. I was getting around the limitations by creating line art using the primary colours available. I remember doing a profile of a man's face in primary-coloured line. Here's an early pic - nasty screenshot taken at the time and scanned from a print I found when we moved house 4 years ago. Originals are totally lost.

I met a Compunet (not Compuserve) editor and he liked my stuff so much that he published it. I was so chuffed that every other post on the chat carousel must have been along the lines of "have you seen my pictures yet?" and, eventually I was Named by the chat regulars as Rainbow.

There y'go. I've been Rainbow ever since.