Obituary: Keith Hughes

Keith’s career began in 1965 at MAS Research, where he began to focus on computerised survey analysis. After working at ICL, CRC and Libra, he became a consultant in 1973 and co-authored the prototype version of MERLIN. In the 1980s he helped found the Tab Shop and Market Research Software and continued developing MERLIN until quite recently when others took over the task.

In 2010, Keith was made an honorary member of the Association of Survey Computing in recognition of his work developing the triple-s standard, and earlier this year was made an honorary fellow of the Market Research Society for the same reason.

I have already received numerous comments from clients and colleagues to tell me how much Keith was loved and appreciated, especially for his eccentricities. Working with him was never dull – he had strong opinions, but was never upset if you disagreed with him as he enjoyed a good discussion.

I first met Keith in 1976 but did not see much of him until 1990 when I became a MERLIN user. When that happened, he delivered a training session to my department and spoke non-stop with great enthusiasm and volume, and I recall taking a headache tablet at the end of the day. In 1991, he phoned me to say he was starting a new company (Merlinco) and asked me to join him to deliver client training, as he did not think that was his strength. The very same week another friend mentioned the possibility of collaborating with him, so I called someone who knew both to ask for advice, which I will never forget: “If you want to be happy, go with Keith.” Based on that advice, I joined Merlinco where I spent many happy years working with Keith (and we made some money as well).

By John Tebboth, director at Merlinco

Keith Hughes’ past colleagues at Denjon International were very sorry to hear the news about Keith.

For the majority of the time from 1973 to 1984 Keith worked for Denjon, firstly as a consultant to Rank Xerox, where he provided specialist analysis services using the Quantum package, and then as the director at Denjon responsible for software development, working alongside Andy Collins.

Keith was primarily responsible for the Sage analysis system which was the forerunner to MERLIN. He was also responsible for the successful trial of the CATI project that later became British Telecoms flagship customer experience project, aptly named Telcare. ‘Care’ is the very apt word to describe Keith’s approach to developing software.

It is now easy to forget what a challenge it was in the late 1960s and early 1970s to produce survey data which was easy to access and understand. (Those of us who wrestled with ‘Counter-Sorters’ early in our careers will fully understand how complicated and tedious (and limiting) earlier methods were). Keith was one of a talented generation of developers attracted to the market research industry at the time because we really did have ‘interesting’ data problems, and he and others made a great contribution to our ability to analyse data, and perhaps more importantly, to communicate results succinctly to clients.

You could argue that it was this unique (at the time) ability that gave market research its ‘edge’, and helped it to become the successful industry it is today. We all stand on the ‘shoulders of giants’.

By Phyllis Macfarlane and Tony Dent, Better Statistics CIC