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Beer and music enthusiast wins a dream Hi-Fi!!
Midweek Comet, July 1983
Every music lover’s dream came true in New Malden last week when a sales manager won the ultimate in hi-fi – all £10,000 worth of it.
“It’s going to be useful,” said the lucky man, Mr. Michael Thow, who has had to make do with a radiogram worth around £50 until now.
When he arrived at Unilet Hi-Fi in New Malden High Street to be presented with his prize he was still trying to work out how anyone could spend a cool £10,000 on hi-fi equipment.
But it’s not so unusual for Unilet, who have just supplied and installed hi-fi equipment worth £100,000 in a home in Esher and can count actor Yul Brynner, film director Sir Richard Attenborough and singer Kate Bush among its many customers.
In helping Mr. Thow to choose his prize the shop had to bear in mind that all the equipment had to fit into the 12-foot-square living room in his maisonette.
“That’s not easy to do,” said general manager Mr. Raymond Churchouse. But one of the rules in the competition stated that the prize was intended for use in a single room.
The contest was run by Lowenbrau and involved studying a photograph of a tape deck and estimating how much playing time was left on the tape in minutes, seconds and tenths of seconds.
Using 120 peel-off labels from the back of Lowenbrau Special Export bottles, Mr. Thow made 60 entries, determined to win something.
As it happened through pure guesswork he came up with the magic figure of 26 minutes three seconds and two-tenths, which was exactly right. But so did someone else and there was a tie-breaker before he finally won first prize.
* Choosing his hi-fi above, is Mr. Michael Thow and his wife, Catherine, and, from left, managing director Mr. Peter Merrick and sales manager Mr. Raymond Churchouse.