What You See Is What You Get: My Autobiography (54 page)

As I explained earlier, the power supply for the whole system was actually in the monitor. The reason IBM computers had a fan inside them was that
their
power supply was in the base unit and therefore needed a fan to cool it down so that the sensitive microprocessor circuits wouldn't get hot. In our computer, there was nothing inside the base unit that got hot, so it didn't need a fan.

Despite this, the BBC put out a statement saying that they wouldn't buy these Amstrads because they had no fan. Understandably, I went berserk. I got hold of our corporate lawyer, David Hyams, and asked him to deal with the BBC and a few others. Within a week, the BBC were forced to make a public apology. The managing director of IBM UK, Tony Cleaver, called me to say that this rumour was not a corporate position they were taking; it had been put around unofficially by some of their sales staff. He started rattling off the IBM employees' manual guidelines stating what measures were going to be taken against these individuals, but I wasn't interested at all. The damage had been done. People were still saying, 'Don't buy the Amstrad because it hasn't got a fan.'

Believe it or not, I immediately asked the factory to fit a fan in the base unit of the PC1512. The fan did absolutely naff all - it was cooling a cool area - but we could now say that the Amstrad PC1512 had a fan.

I am a marketing man - I give people what they want. It seemed an obvious solution to me. As I said to the
Financial Times,
'If they want a fan, I'll give them a bloody fan. If they want a computer with pink spots on, I'll give them a computer with pink spots on. I'm not here to argue.' That statement made a lot of people at Amstrad laugh and as I walked around the engineering floor, I could see everybody had stuck pink spots all over their computers. Stanley Kalms called, laughing (unusual for him, the miserable sod) and saying, 'Now, now, young Alan, we're very proud of you here at Dixons, but you know you really shouldn't talk to the
Financial Times
in that way.'

Adding the fan stuffed IBM and the BBC.

*

The original Amstrad PC1512 was sold at PS399 with a paper-white monitor and a floppy disk drive. The twin floppy disk drive with paper-white monitor was an extra PS100 and the twin floppy model with colour monitor was PS649. To our amazement, the biggest seller was the dearest machine. Clearly we had
moved into a marketplace where businesses were buying this product. It was the dawn of office automation, when the computer rapidly became a must-have, one-per-desk item.

Then there was the advertising campaign. I came up with the strapline 'Compatible with You Know Who. Priced as only We Know How.' The advertising agency we used at the time tried to change a couple of words, so they could claim that the brilliant strapline was theirs. I said to Malcolm Miller, 'Tell them to forget it and use my strapline without changing it. Tell them they'll still get their fee and can still tell the world it was their idea.'

Imagine my surprise a month or so later when I visited the Comdex Computer Show in Atlanta, Georgia and saw that some American monkey manufacturer had copied our strapline and plastered it all over their stand. Malcolm and I contacted the exhibition organisers to explain to them that this guy was using our strapline on his stand without our permission. He'd nicked it from us. This is typical of Americans - they feel it's their divine right to take something they see in the colonies and use it without any repercussions. Well, they hadn't yet come across me.

Amstrad was becoming the biggest personal computer supplier in Europe, but these Yanks claimed they'd never heard of us. My complaint to the organiser was met with derision, as if to say, 'Who are you?' Nevertheless, we kicked up a fuss and told them we'd get an injunction not only to shut down the stand, but also to close their show. This got their attention and in the end the manufacturer was forced to take down their signs.

The strapline was used by Dominguez in Spain and Marion in France. Of course, Schneider was unable to use it, due to the goody-goody law in Germany that made sure that IBM's feelings weren't hurt.

So great was the impact we'd made in the market, I was contacted again by Tony Cleaver, the managing director of IBM UK, who told me that we needed to enter into a licence agreement with them over certain patents they held. Most certainly, some of the techniques used in our design did infringe IBM patents, so we needed to sort this out to avoid any legal problems. The royalties offered were very fair and we duly entered into an agreement for worldwide sales.

My mind went back to 1963. There I was at sixteen, failing IBM's aptitude test and here I was twenty-three years later, signing a licence agreement with them. Within three months, I'd taken 27 per cent of the total European market away from them. Mr Gates was right to want to be in our box.

Losing the Midas Touch

1987-9

By now, Amstrad was such a big player that I was constantly being invited to attend government functions. I recall getting invitations from Prime Minister Mrs Thatcher, the Chancellor and various other ministers, as well as Prince Charles. Naively thinking these might be interesting events and that maybe I'd get to meet the person who invited me, for a one-to-one chat, I schlapped along to a few of these bashes, but soon realised that most of the time they were packed with hundreds of people and if you stood on a chair you might see the Prime Minister somewhere in the middle, mingling with the crowd.

Margaret Thatcher in particular used to haul me out from time to time as a glowing example of the new breed of chirpy-chappy entrepreneur, a kind of role model to help endorse her policy of widening the opportunities for anyone from any background to become successful in business.

On one occasion, she invited Ann and me to a rather large luncheon arranged in honour of the Prime Minister of Malta. I went, but had no idea why I'd been invited - after all, what's Malta got to do with me? Poor Ann looked at me nervously when we saw the table plan and realised that not only was she going to be split up from me, but she was sitting with Mrs Thatcher! I just shrugged my shoulders, a bit heartlessly, as I couldn't do anything about it.

I was sitting next to the wife of Rocco Forte and some big cheese from Malta. Unlike Rocco Forte, who had hotels in Malta, I still didn't know what I was doing there. We'd never invested a penny in Malta; in fact, we never even sold stuff there.

I got to the bottom of it by subtly probing the official. It transpired that
the Maltese Prime Minister had requested certain guests to be at the lunch as representatives of British companies that had invested in Malta. Get this. It seems the Maltese Prime Minister's son, who was interested in computers, worked in a microchip factory in Malta owned by the Italian chip-maker SGS. The son had seen millions of chips rolling down the production line with Amstrad's name printed on them (we always had our name and part number printed on any custom chip when we owned the intellectual property rights). This kid must have assumed the factory was ours and told his dad - and that's why I was invited!

When we left, Ann told me that Thatcher had bent her ear and insisted she tell me that I should start to make my computers in England. I said, 'If Thatcher only knew how Ferranti, a British company, had screwed up, forcing me to use others like SGS, she wouldn't be saying that.'

I soon put paid to these bashes, as they were a waste of my time, plus there was the risk that you'd get lumbered with a load of boring people. I told my secretary, Frances, 'Ditch all these invites and reply that I'm busy. If they come back enquiring why, try to suss out if it's one of these bum-rushes with hundreds of people or whether it's more intimate. If it's the latter, I might go.'

One day, Frances came to me all excited. 'You've received an invitation from Her Majesty the Queen and Prince Philip to attend Buckingham Palace.'

'Calm down, Frances,' I said. 'This is bound to be another of those bashes with five hundred people. Tell them I'm busy.'

A few minutes later she came into my office and said, 'Sorry, Alan, but you
are
going. I've been told by the Palace that you
will
attend.'

'What do you mean, I
will
attend?'

Alan, this is a private lunch, just you and no more than five others with the Queen and Prince Philip, and I've been told to tell you that you
will
attend.'

Bloody hell - of course I'd attend! Can you believe it? Alan from Clapton was going up to London to see the Queen.

An official invitation duly arrived along with security instructions telling me to turn up at 12.30 p.m. on 25 February 1987. I took it home to show Ann, who couldn't believe it either, and she in turn called all our family and friends.

On arriving at the main courtyard of the Palace in my chauffeur-driven Rolls, I was met by some fellow who escorted me up the stairs into the very grand dining room. It was a beautiful room with a high ceiling decked out with gold leaf and a wonderful large dining table with ornate chairs to match.
One of the equerries hovering about said, 'Hello, Mr Sugar, please come this way. May we offer you a drink before lunch?'

I don't drink at lunchtime, as it gives me a heavy head, so I replied, 'Yes, a tomato juice, please.'

I can't recall who the other five guests were, apart from the actress Wendy Craig, famous at the time for being in the TV series
Butterflies.
At lunch, I sat opposite the Queen and next to Prince Philip. He spoke to me of his interest in computers and we exchanged some chit-chat, including a disagreement about whether IBM printers were made in England - he thought they were; I told him they weren't.

We also chatted about his dietary tendencies - how he had to watch his weight what with so many of these lunches and how he would eat just a little of every course. Scintillating stuff. I would rather have watched paint dry, but, to be fair, I'm sure he was bored with me also. He must have been totally fed up with making polite small talk.

After lunch, we were all invited to go into the anteroom, which was as opulent as the dining room. The Queen and Prince Philip stood at the end of the room and the guests were invited to go and chat some more. The other five were like bees round a honeypot. 'Hello, Queen, I'm so and so. Yes, Queen, no, Queen. I've done this, Queen. I've got that, Queen . . .' all that stuff. I decided to stand back and let them get on with it, mainly because I hadn't got a clue what to talk to the Queen about.

One of the equerries spotted me lurking at the back of the room and told me to go ahead and speak to the Queen. He put his hand behind my back and gently nudged me forward. During that walk across the large room, I was so nervous. What the bloody hell was I going to say? What could we talk about? I have no idea what BS came out of my mouth, but I'm pretty sure the Queen didn't care. Nonetheless, it was a great event for me, and a great honour.

I had arranged to meet Ann that evening in town for dinner with a bunch of friends. As soon as we sat down, they wanted chapter and verse on the day's events. 'Well, Alan, what did the Queen say to you? What was it like? How was the lunch?'

You can imagine their excitement, but there was nothing much to tell, so I went into mischievous mode. Putting on a serious face, I recounted the bit where I had to walk across the room to speak to the Queen on a one-to-one basis. I told them I didn't know what to talk about so I had to think up something quickly.

'So what did you say?'

'Well, as I got to the Queen, I just burst out with, "Your Majesty, I feel like
a fraud. I arrived here today by car when instead, Your Majesty, I should have mounted a white horse at the Tower of London, put on a cape and ridden along the embankment, with the mane of the horse and my cape flowing in the wind, before galloping along The Mall and finally entering the great courtyard of your palace. I should then have dismounted from the horse, run up the stairs and thrown my cape to the floor in front of you."'

They were glued to my every word. 'You're kidding! What did she say?' I paused for a few seconds. 'Well, she turned to Prince Philip and said, "Hey, Phil, who is this fucking nutter?"'

Ann gave me a whack on the shoulder for winding them all up. Of course I was joking - the Queen would never use a word like 'nutter'.

*

By now I had moved my mother and father out of their council flat in Stamford Hill and bought them a nice flat in Barkingside, Essex, near where Daphne lives. This effectively brought them much closer to the family. On the odd occasion, my dad would still pop up to the Brentwood office to chat with some of his old colleagues. When he did come up, he'd be walking around the place, rudely poking his nose into people's meeting rooms. The visitors and the newer staff would look up from their meeting and wonder who on earth this old man was. Of course, the old hardcore Amstrad staff knew him and he was obviously quite welcome around the place.

On one occasion, he came to the office using his free bus pass, explaining to me that he'd caught a bus from Barkingside to Gants Hill, then another bus from Gants Hill to Romford, then yet another bus from Romford to Shenfield and finally a train to Brentwood! He quite enjoyed getting out of the house and doing a little bit of travelling and it must have been a godsend to my mother to get him out of the way for a while.

On this particular day, the heavens opened up and it was belting down with rain. I told him that there was no way he was going home on this epic journey by train and bus and that my driver would take him.