Colin O'Donoghue

Pathetic as it was, the 1968 sit-in at Hornsey College of Art gave me a hint of how revolutions start and how authorities react. In 1994 at Elstree Film Studios, I was designing my patented character Disney clocks, when Hunchback and Pocahontas tolled the end of the Disney Renaissance. The need for a traditional fairytale was in the air and the feud between Michael Eisner and Jeffrey Katzenberg gave me the idea of a castle in turmoil, threatened not only by an external force but internal strife. Hamelin is famous for a piper and corrupt town council. The London Borough of Barnet’s accounts have not been passed by auditors for three years. Along with the 2008 Banking crisis, this inspired me to turn the rhyme I wrote back in 1994 into a novel, The Saga of Draxfort, a castle and dynasty rotten to the core. After patenting a pop-up display, which Warners used for Batman and Disney for Tangled, I published DIY Patent Online as a hyperlinked Kindle to help inventors understand international patenting. Amazon comments are more than I could ever have hoped for.