And so it was that Walter Dampatch had his first invention, the CarCom officially registered at the Patent Office on Thursday 14 February 2008, St Valentine’s Day! Riesling thought it was apt that they should have the fruit of their endeavours recognised on such a romantic day.
The following day, Riesling fired twenty letters to various car manufacturers in Europe, USA and Japan, proposing collaboration on the CarCom to be incorporated into the overall production of their models. She attached to each letter sufficient information and explanatory diagrams to give them an idea of Walter’s design, explaining that the invention is already patented in their names in the UK, Europe and Worldwide.
On Saturday 1st March 2008, St David’s Day, Riesling and Walter received the 12th letter of apology from a car manufacturer. The letter read as follows:
27 February 2008
Dear Mr and Mrs Dampatch,
Thank you for your letter of 15 February 2008 in which you propose Ovlov Cars incorporate your CarCom design into our future models. We were very impressed with your ideas however, Ovlov Cars has a state of the art design facility and we continually introduce new design concepts as part of our long term strategy. It is not our policy however, to take on new ideas from outside our design facility. We regret therefore to inform you that we will not incorporate CarCom in our future models.
We wish you luck for the future.
Yours sincerely
Gustav Ulaff (Head of Communications)
Walter was getting a little depressed by the latest rejection and didn’t want any breakfast.
Riesling: look pet, we only need one company to accept our proposal and we will be in business. Now cheer up and have your bacon butty
Walter: what’s the use dear Butter Ball, they all say the same thing; if they don’t think of it first, it is not worth doing
Riesling; nonsense! Do you know what today is? St David’s Day! I am always lucky on St David’s Day. Go on, eat your bacon butty
Walter: well, I hope you are right my Welsh Lamb
Walter took his bacon butty and cup of coffee and went to the lounge to watch the morning news. Walter always watches the news on Saturday morning while having his breakfast; it is his weekend treat. He flicked the channels with his remote control until he got to SKY News. He watched an item on the continuing trouble in the Middle East and another item on deteriorating school standards. The third item made Walter sit up right and stop chewing his mouthful of bacon butty. He shouted for Riesling to come over and watch. Jeremy Drew the news reporter was saying:
“…this weekend is being trumpeted by the marketing people as the “iBall Weekend”. There will be simultaneous launches of the new sensational product called iBall in Los Angeles, New York, London, Paris, Moscow, Dubai, Shanghai, Tokyo, and Sydney. The press, media and selected celebrities have been invited to special iBall parties to try out the new gadget which is set to take over from the iPod as the must-have gadget of the 21st Century. The public will have their first chance to try out the iBall on Monday when the product will be available for retail from thousands of outlets all over the world. If you have not heard of the iBall before, it is the ingenious brainchild of the reclusive Gill Bates and an unknown English partner called Stephen Bawtree. The lucky iBall user is able to download and play videos and films in 3-D, yes 3-D! The company iBall Inc., set up at the cost of millions of dollars claims the quality of the sound is 100 times better than the iPod and the picture is 100 times better than any IMAX cinema picture! Well, we have to wait and see whether this claim can be substantiated. In a rare interview, Gill Bates said he was very pleased to see the birth of the iBall after years of rigorous research and development…”
Riesling: there you are pet, what did I tell you?
Walter: yes, yes, yes, I suppose you are always right but, what if they have solved the 3-D Disorientation Syndrome problem?
Riesling: well, if they did, then we have lost this battle but we would not have lost the war, isn’t it? We still have a lot of scores to settle with Gill Bates
Walter: I hope you know what you are taking on here my Brave Warrior
Riesling: the question is: does Gill Bates know who he is taking on?
Walter: whom
Riesling: Gill Bates! Why don’t you listen to me pet?
Throughout the weekend, Riesling and Walter watched out for the news of bad reaction to the iBall. Unfortunately, the topic of the iBall was dropped because of breaking news about the sensational revelations that Tony Blair the ex-Prime Minister has secretly converted to Islam and that he was about to emigrate to Saudi Arabia to immerse himself in the religion full time.
It was Sunday night before Sky News announced new developments on the iBall. The news reporter Jeremy Drew, looking like he had been recently mugged by a gang of thugs and affecting a “Battle of Britain” spirit to his intonation said:
The iBall debacle is growing by the minute. From the initial fanfare and Champagne launches less than 36 hours ago, fingers of accusation are pointing in all directions. Put simply, the iBall is staring failure in the face, it is a death trap! The sound and picture quality are good, very good indeed. However, once you finish watching a video of your favourite song and you take the iBall off, you experience dizziness, nausea and you lose the power of walking in a straight line. I was one of the lucky ones by walking into a door a minute after trying out my iBall and got this black eye for my troubles. Many others were less fortunate and suffered concussion, broken limbs and in one case, a French reporter fell off a balcony and landed on an old lady walking her poodle in the middle of Paris. In New York, a well known celebrity has filed a lawsuit against the manufacturers for $50 million because she fell and broke one of her finger nails. To minimise the damage, the iBall Inc executives are trying to recall the hundreds of thousands of iBalls from outlets all over the world. Gill Bates was not available for comment. His partner Steve Bawtree released a statement saying “It is nothing to do with me; all I wanted is for my darling Sarah to be released from prison for a crime she did not commit”. An eminent neurological scientist explained that the problem is when one eye experiences 3-D in one perspective while the other eye remains looking at the world in the real perspective; this division causes the brain to temporarily split itself into two! The problem is temporary but there is a possibility of some people not recovering their normal faculty and end up with split personality for good. The scientist went on to say that the iBall is harmless only to one group of people, one-eyed people who couldn’t possibly suffer from 3DDS…
By Monday evening, a total of 2,536 lawsuits were filed against the iBall Inc company in the USA, France, UK, United Arab Emirates, Russia and Australia. The Chinese government closed the Shanghai factory, where the iBall is manufactured, arrested the entire management team and issued an international warrant for the arrest of Gill Bates and Stephen Bawtree. Lawyers all over the world held meetings and video conferences and they were unanimous in their judgement that the iBall will make them more money than the law suits filed against the entire tobacco industry, the airline industry, and all divorce cases put together! They all looked forward to a happy and prosperous 2008 and agreed to declare Gill Bates as their patron saint.
The other group of people who had a professional interest in the iBall was the British Serious Fraud Office. In January, they received an anonymous letter from someone, who signed her name as Claire without giving a last name or address, accusing the world famous businessman Gill Bates of stealing someone’s ideas. The SFO Director, who reports to the British Attorney General, was shown the letter and after careful consideration, he said: “it could be something or it could be nothing”. However, after hearing the news of the disastrous launch of the iBall over the weekend, the SFO Director went to work on Monday morning, and found a note on his desk from the Attorney General demanding a report on the iBall Debacle within 24 hours. The SFO Director called his team of investigators for a meeting in his office. He demanded a full report on his desk in 23 hours!
To unclench your buttocks and read the final chapter, please click here: Chapter 27
