The authors have developed a novel laser-diode pumping scheme (1.4 and 1.56 mu m) for a thulium-doped fibre amplifier operating in the 1475 to 1502nm wavelength band. They report a small-signal gain > 25 dB, a noise figure < 7dB, an optical-to-optical efficiency of 10.3%, and a total output power of +17.1 dBm.