In between bouts of fire-fighting, I used to cheer myself up with new ideas. I was always on the lookout for new innovations. One of those ideas came from thinking back to how we went from the single cassette tower system to the twin cassette version. I wondered if the same philosophy could be applied to VCR. I was conscious of copyright issues, however. I had to think carefully about how we could justify a twin-deck VCR without getting ourselves into lots of trouble, because in those days people rented pre-recorded tapes from Blockbuster and a twin-deck VCR might be thought of as a means to copy them.

However, after a bit of fancy work in the software and electronics, we designed a product that would allow a customer to load the double-deck VCR with two tapes and set the thing to record for eight hours. Bingo – that was it – the true justification of why we would make a twin-deck VCR.

It was not easy to convince Funai to produce this product. They started to worry that the product incited copyright infringement, but eventually we managed to convince Funai that the product was viable. I knew if we could reach the magic £399 price point, it would be a big hit.

Of course, our advertising displayed a bold warning of how it was illegal for people to copy copyrighted material and we also put large red labels on the front of the unit and outer packaging. There was uproar within the media industry about this product, but despite their protestations, there was nothing they could do. Amstrad had cleverly warned consumers – using the same reverse psychology trick as we used on our audio units – that the Double Decker must not be used for illegal purposes. The product was born and became a tremendous hit in 1990.