[kevinaston1]

Good evening Wendy.

I cannot throw any light on Dr. Tong, but I can tell you who I believe beat you to that job in the 80s.

His name is Chris Burrell; the best technician I ever had working for me. He had a terrible skin condition which meant he slept very little, during his waking hours, he would read prodigiously, and he had a totally photographic memory.

One Friday afternoon, he asked me if he could take home the TTL and CMOS data books over the weekend. I told him he was welcome to do so, and asked what project he was working on. He explained that there was no project, he was sick of having to refer to the books whist working on our products, so he wanted to memorise them.


I never saw him have to refer to a data book after that, but he left us a while later to go to Datong.



On a slightly off key note, but very funny. Chris is an excellent pianist. I arranged to meet him one night at a local Working Men’s Club where they were having auditions for a new organist; I told him he would enjoy it, but my aim was to try and get him to take the audition.

As we sat listening to the first musician, his face was and absolute picture. For anyone who has never been in a Working Men’s Club, Some organists were superb, these we not, and he was amazed to hear such bad playing.


After the audition, I took Chris onstage to introduce him to the drummer (and maybe get him to play). Chris noticed the grand piano at the back of the stage, dived onto it and launched into a superb rendition of The Six Wives of Henry VIII. The drummer and all of the auditioning organists stood there open mouthed at his ability; apart from a member of the club committee who raced onto the stage to ask what he thought he was doing?

“That instrument is for musicians to use”