I was using it in the early 90s when everyone else was playing on their Sega and early PCs. We were poor so had to make do with very last-generation tech. I enjoyed playing games on it and then got a programming book (Advanced Programming Techniques for the BBC Micro my Jim McGregor and Alan Watt - I bought a copy recently) from my school library as a teenager with thoughts of writing a game, when Pentiums IIs were appearing... the folly. I did my homework on its word processor and printed it out with a deafening Epson, which looked pretty rubbish compared to my contempory's Encarta-pictured-studded inkjet printouts with WordArt. Oh well.
As it turned out, the programming book was very interesting and had all manner of stuff in it I didn't understand like 3D programming methods with maths I didn't understand, but I did design my own glyph and animate it walking across the screen after designing it on grid paper.
My dad still has all the disk drives, second processor, A, B, B+ and Master units in his loft along with a series of Cub monitors. And various eeproms like Speech, View etc, and an AMX mouse. Even had an Integrex colour inkjet which I managed to get some output from (very quiet), but that went to the bin some years ago. I think he has all the manuals too.
Really fond of the Beeb as it served me well and introduced me to programming despite the inadequacies of the keybord. Will have to grab a Master from him. I certainly do miss the instant start-up time...
I ended up doing my paper round as a teenager and spending the money on PC Plus and Micromart in the hope of buying a PC but had to do with ones school threw out again, so I was languishing on a 486 DX2 when PIIIs and Celerons were around, but I don't regret it. Introduced me to Linux RedHat 6.2 and many more exciting computer journeys.