The John Walton Muscular Dystrophy Research Centre in the University of Newcastle and the BMAA Theory of Motor Neuron Disease

I first met John Walton in 1966 when he picked me up from Newcastle railway station to interview me for a neurology registrar position in the Newcastle General Hospital. The senior clinicians for whom I had worked in Oxford and London would never have thought to do such a thing. John took me all round Newcastle and the General Hospital Regional Neurological Center and offered me the job. I gladly accepted it and so was launched my career in neuromuscular diseases. I had been drawn to Newcastle because I had done some research in Oxford on what we then called disseminated sclerosis and had heard Henry Miller give a talk on the research that he and E.J. Field were doing at the MRC Demyelinating Disease Center. Henry was a charismatic figure and I immediately asked him for a job. He offered me a research registrar position with EJ, but it was the wrong time in my early career to get into full-time research; I needed more clinical experience. Hence, I applied to John Walton, having previously seen only one case of muscular dystrophy in my life. It was a very fast learning curve. The joint Friday morning meetings of the RVI and NGH neurology staff