Ian McNaught-Davis | Code Like It's 198x

When the BBC went looking for someone to explain computers on television in 1981, the name came from a botanist. David Bellamy, who had made a series with the producer Paul Kriwaczek, suggested Ian McNaught-Davis, the European head of the computer services company Comshare. McNaught-Davis came to Kriwaczek’s office and watched the pilot. “He instantly sold himself to us,” Kriwaczek told Your Computer, “because he was just so obviously very good.” Viewers of The Computer Programme got a presenter who ran a computer business. What most of them did not know was that 25 years earlier he had been one of the first four people to stand on top of the Muztagh Tower in the Karakoram.

Fast facts

Born: 30 August 1929, Wakefield, Yorkshire.
Died: February 2014, aged 84.
Education: mathematics at the University of Manchester.
Day job: Comshare, a computer services company; in 1982 he was its European head.
BBC computing series: The Computer Programme (1982), Making the Most of the Micro (1983), Computers in Control (1984), Micro Live (1984–1987).
Mountaineering: first ascent of the Muztagh Tower (1956); president of the British Mountaineering Council (1991–1994) and of the UIAA, the international mountaineering federation (1995–2004).

A climber first

McNaught-Davis grew up in Wakefield, went to Rothwell Grammar School on a scholarship and read mathematics at Manchester, where he started climbing. In 1956 he, Joe Brown, John Hartog and Tom Patey made the first ascent of the Muztagh Tower, a 7,276-metre peak in the Karakoram that had been thought impossible.

He was on television long before the computers. In July 1967 the BBC broadcast a climb of the Old Man of Hoy, a sea stack in Orkney, live over three evenings. Three pairs climbed it: Chris Bonington and Patey on the route they had pioneered the year before, and two new lines by Pete Crew with Dougal Haston and by Brown with McNaught-Davis. It made him, in the British Mountaineering Council’s words, “well known to the British public”. He also climbed the Eiffel Tower for television with the French mountaineer Lionel Terray.

The Computer Programme

Kriwaczek wanted three presenters for his ten-part series: “a computer expert, a lady reporter and a representative layman”. Chris Serle, from That’s Life, was the layman, and asked the questions a viewer would ask. McNaught-Davis was the expert who answered them, and Gill Neville was the reporter. The first programme went out in January 1982. Kriwaczek explained the plan to Your Computer: a general introduction, four programmes on the principles of computing, four on applications, and a last programme on how society would be affected.

It was a hit. The BBC Computer Literacy Project entry has the audience figures and the story of how the series chose its computer, the BBC Micro, made by Acorn Computers. When the BBC began filming a second series in November 1982, Acorn User reported the plan that “Mac”, as it called him, would “do for the inside of computers what David Bellamy did for back gardens”.

Making the Most of the Micro

The second series, Making the Most of the Micro, started on 10 January 1983 and was aimed at people who already had a computer. McNaught-Davis presented it, with Ian Trackman. The opening titles showed him superimposed on the BBC Micro’s circuit board, and he appeared on the cover of Acorn User next to Marvin the paranoid android from The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.

Not everyone liked it. BBC Micro User reported in March 1983 that McNaught-Davis rejected complaints that the series talked down to viewers. “It’s unique,” he said, and it was “creating considerable interest from both novices and more experienced users.” The difficulty, he said, was making sure everyone understood the terminology, and “the right formula has been reached” by using technical jargon selectively. The same magazine’s columnist Barry Wood was not persuaded. When the series ended he wrote that it had “all the entertainment value of the Eurovision Song Contest but none of its intellectual depth”. His “star moment” was an exchange about data transfer: “‘How fast does it go?’ enquired straight man McNaught Davis. ‘Very fast’, came the informative reply” from John Coll.

Live on air

Coll and McNaught-Davis fronted a live programme on 2 October 1983. It gave McNaught-Davis his best-remembered moment. When Coll logged on to British Telecom’s Gold electronic mail service to demonstrate it, a hacker who had cracked the BBC’s password was waiting. The screen showed “COMPUTER SECURITY ERROR — ILLEGAL ACCESS”, then a message signed “THE NUTCRACKER (HACKERS UK)”. Personal Computer News reported that Coll was “flabbergasted”, while McNaught-Davis “happily read the poem which followed”, “The Hacker’s Song”: “Put another password in, / Bomb it out and try again”.

In 1984 the pair hosted Computers in Control, a five-part series about computers that drove machines, from computer-controlled racing-car suspension at Lotus to the animated robot puppets of American pizza parlours.

Micro Live

Micro Live began on BBC2 on Friday 5 October 1984, a monthly live magazine programme with McNaught-Davis and Lesley Judd, formerly of Blue Peter, as presenters. The first series did well enough that the second went weekly. By January 1986 Acorn User described the team as McNaught-Davis, “a veteran of Making the Most of the Micro and other BBC Computer Literacy programmes”, Fred Harris on the hardware and Judd playing “the computer-naive sidekick”. Where Serle had asked the questions in 1982, Judd now did.

McNaught-Davis defended the programme in print. Answering an open letter from Bruce Everiss, printed in Your Computer in February 1986, he wrote that Micro Live had interviewed “Sir Clive, Alan Sugar, Roger Foster and Shirley Williams”, and that “we think the computer industry news is boring too — that’s why we have dropped it.” Micro Live ran until March 1987.

He was, by then, one of the industry’s public faces. He presented the RITA (Recognition of Information Technology Achievement) awards in 1984, and in 1986 sat on the panel that named Alan Sugar of Amstrad the RITA personality of the year.

Later years

McNaught-Davis stayed at Comshare, becoming managing director of its British subsidiary. He went back to the mountains in his public work. He was president of the British Mountaineering Council from 1991 to 1994, and in 1995 became president of the UIAA, the international mountaineering and climbing federation, a post he held until 2004. He was later a patron of the British Mountaineering Council. He had been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease three years before his death, and died in February 2014, aged 84. Public sources differ on the exact day: the British Mountaineering Council announced his death on 10 February, while The Register and the Himalayan Journal give 8 February.

Sources

Your Computer, March 1982, pp. 24–25: Paul Kriwaczek on making The Computer Programme (the three presenters, Bellamy’s suggestion, McNaught-Davis as “European head of Comshare”, the plan of the ten programmes).
Acorn User issue 4, November 1982, p. 5: filming of the second series, and the Bellamy comparison.
Acorn User issue 7, February 1983, p. 7: “BBC Update” (McNaught-Davis with Marvin on the cover; the series on Monday nights from 10 January).
BBC Micro User vol. 1 no. 1, March 1983, p. 5: “BBC’s man in the micro” (his reply to the complaints; the opening titles).
Laserbug issue 11, April 1983: episode notes for Making the Most of the Micro, “Presented by Ian McNaught Davis, with Ian Trackman”.
BBC Micro User vol. 1 no. 3, May 1983: Barry Wood’s Tailpiece.
Acorn User issue 15, October 1983: the live programme of 2 October, with John Coll and McNaught-Davis as front men.
Personal Computer News, 22 December 1983 – 4 January 1984: the hacked electronic mail demonstration and “The Hacker’s Song”.
Acorn User issue 21, April 1984: Computers in Control.
Your Computer, March 1984: the RITA awards presented by McNaught-Davis.
Acorn User issue 27, October 1984: Micro Live to go out monthly from 5 October, with Lesley Judd and McNaught-Davis.
Acorn User issue 42, January 1986: Geoff Nairn, “Going on air with the Micro Live team” (the weekly second series and the three presenters).
Amstrad Action issue 6, March 1986, and Amtix issue 5, March 1986: the RITA judging panel and Alan Sugar’s award.
Your Computer, June 1986, letters: McNaught-Davis’s reply to Bruce Everiss.
Tim Danton, The Computers That Made Britain (Raspberry Pi Press, 2021), chapter “BBC Micro”: Micro Live from October 1984 to March 1987, presented by Lesley Judd, Ian McNaught-Davis and Fred Harris.
British Mountaineering Council, “BMC Patron Ian McNaught-Davis (1929 - 2014)”, 10 February 2014 (web, secondary): the Muztagh Tower party, the BMC and UIAA presidencies, the Old Man of Hoy, the Eiffel Tower climb with Lionel Terray, his illness. https://services.thebmc.co.uk/bmc-patron-uiaa-president-ian-mcnaught-davis-dies
UIAA, “BMC Patron and former UIAA President Ian McNaught-Davis dies”, 10 February 2014 (web, secondary): the Muztagh Tower (7,276 m) with Brown, Hartog and Patey; UIAA president from May 1995, re-elected until 2004. https://www.theuiaa.org/bmc-patron-and-former-uiaa-president-ian-mcnaught-davis-dies/
Ronald Faux, “In Memoriam: Ian McNaught-Davis”, Himalayan Journal vol. 69 (web, secondary): birth date and Wakefield, Rothwell Grammar School, Manchester mathematics, Comshare’s British subsidiary, date of death. https://www.himalayanclub.org/hj/69/19/in-memoriam/
The Register, “Computer expert and broadcaster Ian McNaught-Davis dies”, 18 February 2014 (web, secondary): date of death. https://www.theregister.com/2014/02/18/ian_mcnaught_davis_obituary/
Wikipedia, “Old Man of Hoy” (web, secondary): the July 1967 live broadcast and the three climbing pairs. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Man_of_Hoy