Sinclair vs Acorn: the rerun, Wired UK

Freeman and Armstrong as Curry and Sinclair

“I’ve always stuck up for Clive Sinclair,” actor Alexander Armstrong insists. “I’m of the generation that remembers the best of him – but the C5 is his legacy, and that’s unfair.” Armstrong plays Sir Clive, opposite Martin Freeman as Chris Curry of Acorn Computers, in Micro Men, a 90-minute drama about the heady days of the British computer industry in the early 1980s.

Micro Men portrays Sinclair and Curry as opposites: Sinclair is brilliant but unwilling to collaborate, whereas Curry is practical but less focused. “Reading the script, I was rooting for Acorn,” Freeman says.

The real-life characters were consulted, and footage such as the advert for the Sinclair QL, featuring the man himself leaping a giant PC the size of a building, also plays a part. Armstrong spent three hours in make-up every day, and vintage computers were loaned by Haverhill’s Centre for Computing History.

And yes, there’s a C5.

This article appeared in the October 2009 issue of Wired UK.