I’d noticed the American VCR market was tending towards these dual-speed VCRs. Effectively, this meant that an E120 videotape (which normally had a maximum recording time of two hours) could accommodate four hours of recording in long-play mode. I knew this would be a big selling feature if we could introduce it to the UK market. The only drawback was that when one used fast-forward or rewind to skip through things like adverts, the picture would have fuzzy stripes across the middle. I was sure this would not be a problem for consumers, as they could easily see when the adverts were over and the programme had restarted and then they’d simply press the play button and the normal, good-quality picture would be restored.

I instructed Funai to make me some samples and I showed them to Nick Lightowler at Comet. His technical people weren’t happy, believing that the fast-forward/‌rewind issue could create a lot of problems with consumers thinking it was a fault. My solution was to state in the instruction book that the stripes were a normal part of the technical operation of the product. In this way, the consumer would accept it. On top of this, I suggested that if we printed the same warning on a big red label and stuck it over the face of the product, we would pre-empt any consumer enquiries. In his usual way, Nick signed on to this. He was still quite cautious, but he agreed to take some stock and try it out. In our advertising, we displayed our low price with a large bomb-blast flagging the main feature: ‘Now you can record and playback up to four hours on one tape.’

We hit it off again. It was a great success and we started to take a big share of the VCR market in the UK.

Inevitably, this dual-speed feature became the industry standard after about a year or so and people like Orion followed suit, but we’d already taken a grip on the market. Due to our advertising, Dixons had to buy these products – reluctantly, of course – because the Amstrad brand name was now much stronger than their own Matsui brand.