In the US they were introduced by the company as the “Flair” in the late 60s, they then changed the name at some point to “Tempo” (and apparently now back to “Flair”, though I think for a while it was also the “Nylon”, which is a terrible name). I don’t know the history in the UK.
I’ve always hated the things myself, though the ball point pens that we had in the 1960s always seemed to be leaking, so they were bad too.
