Sir Alan! Your Retired!

It was inevitable that the announcement that the founder of Amstrad, Sir Alan Sugar would be retiring as chairman of the company would be made, after selling the company to British Sky Broadcasting for £125 million last year.

There has been a long and fruitful partnership between Amstrad and BSkyB which started in the early days of satellite TV.

This was when Sky was in competition with rival satellite provider BSB.

It was Amstrad that supplied most of the equipment to Sky during those times.

The company started in 1968, but only become a familiar name during the early home computer days in the 1980s, when the Amstrad brand became a household name.

The company did have some failures too, for instance the e-mailer telephone system.

This failed to grab a slice of the market.