A number of my friends were telling me I had to patent this great idea. I was not sure as it felt as if a small piece of God had landed in my lap and not being a pharmaceutical company I felt unable to patent god.
However fear got the better of me and I finally made contact with Howard Millhench of R.G.C. Jenkins & Co of  26, Caxton Gate, London. After the briefest of telephone conversations Howard surmised I knew nothing of patents, and he had no idea what I was blabbering about. Being a genial Irish sole he invited me to his office to rectify both.

 

I lived in Loughborough and was in a Harris Tweed, corduroys, flat cap and sturdy shoe phase. His office was the penthouse of a towering glass obelisk . When I arrived at reception looking like a mock Hebridean shepherd there was a vague look of disdain from the elegant receptionist who showed me to the penthouse lift. Howard greeted me with unfettered warmth as I stepped into a penthouse suite bustling with clerical intensity and steered me through this ambience of serious intent to a small tidy office borrowed from a colleague. His excuse being his spacious corner office was a mess. His colleagues office was however the size of a cupboard and so I said let's going to your spacious corner mess..  We did and it was.

I put the structure together and did my normal trick of standing on it... His world stood still for a few moments... " Take it down, take it down I've just got to get my partner." I think it was Chris who was dragged in somewhat bemused ... "Go on do it"... So again I did it again... another small stoppage of the world to be followed by two highly intelligent men grovelling on the floor with 9 bits of stick... Such beauty
A ridiculously low fee was agreed and we were off.  To where I had no idea.

​

The searches produced nothing and within a few weeks a patent pending was registered. Over the next year or so this was followed by patents in UK, Australia, Canada, with Japan and EU ready to accept and the US as ever being protectionist offering nonsense arguments for rejection

Having spent £20,000 and another £6000 required I recognised that I did find it wrong to patent God and rather than stopping people from using it I wanted to help people to do...Which I do to this day.

Poor Howard. He must have been so frustrated with me after all his hard work. I let him down and let the patents go to the heaven where they reside.