Alan Sugar's First Apprentice - A chat with Cliff Lawson of Amstrad

A bit over an hour - see below for contents

Cliff Lawson worked at Amstrad and directly for Alan Sugar for over 24 years so it’s fair to say he saw a great deal of interesting things. Settle down, grab a coffee and take some time to enjoy this fascinating insight into Amstrad as Cliff takes us behind the scenes of some of the company’s hits and misses. We’re talking about the CPC series, the PCW, the PDA600 the GX and all manner of Amstrad goodness. Many thanks to Cliff for his time! Timestamps:
00:00 Intro
01:21 How did the job at Amstrad come about?
05:27 What was the first project Cliff worked on?
08:50 Was the CPC-464 designed to succeed, or to be cheap?
16:44 Amstrad’s acquisition of Sinclair - did it change the company?
21:00 The NC-100 - was it a copy of the Cambridge Z88?
24:45 Was there anything Cliff wanted in the NC100 that didn’t make it?
29:30 The Jetsons age of video calling!
38:50 What was Cliff most proud of?
49:50 Why were Amstrad PC’s so popular?
54:50 Amstrad’s sale to Sky!
57:40 What was Alan like to work for?
1:00:00 What would Cliff do differently?
1:04:12 What does Cliff do for fun these days?

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