MILLIONAIRE clockwork radio inventor Trevor Baylis has called on Bolton education chiefs to set up an "invention academy" in the town.

The 62-year-old boffin said he is fed up with great British inventions being shunned by the country's "stuck-up" companies. And he aims to teach all budding inventors that their ideas can and will be turned into reality.

His comments came as he signed copies of his new book, 'Clock This', at Sweetens Bookshop, on Deansgate.

Mr Baylis - who appears with his best known invention on the Orange mobile phone TV ads - explained how he struggled to find a backer for his clockwork radio, a highly-successful machine which creates its own power through an environmentally friendly wind-up mechanism.

And he said he is determined that other inventors will not have to do what he was forced to do and look to foreign companies for investment. London-born Mr Baylis got the idea for the radio in 1993 after watching a programme about the spread of AIDS in Africa.

The programme observed that, in many regions, radio was the only available means of communication but the need for batteries or electricity made them too expensive or difficult to access.

After a string of "snotty bosses" telling him his idea would not be commercially viable, the inventor stuck two fingers up to the tried and tested routes and forged ahead on his own.

He said: "I contacted the BBC and got on to Tomorrow's World but even they did not truly back my idea saying it would only come into fruition if a buyer could be found.

"But an accountant called Christopher Staines contacted me. Details of the invention were broadcast over a South African radio station and it went from there."

As a result of his difficult climb to the top, the former television stuntman is pressing ahead with an academy of inventors which he hopes will change the old perceptions of ideas men being scruffy, mad eccentrics. He said: "We have to take inventors seriously and see them as normal people. The television, the motorbike - these are just two British inventions which have been taken over and mastered by non-British companies.

"Billions of pounds are being lost. It can't continue to happen.

"I want to see invention classes throughout Britain in towns like this. We are all inventors and all inventions come from creativity and knowledge.

The white-haired man, who lists the jet engine and the computer as favourite inventions, wants a curriculum that tells people how to get their projects off the ground - including patenting the idea.

He added: "I was on the Big Breakfast to look at some young inventor's ideas and I asked each of them if they had patented their machines. They hadn't and the programme was going live to about a million people. Anyone could have stolen them.

"It happened to the inventor of the jet engine. Rolls Royce sat on the idea for ages but I believe that had the inventor forged ahead with it himself we would have seen Concorde earlier and could even have shortened the length of World War Two. Ideas need to be encouraged and used early." Mr Baylis said he is selling more than 125,000 clockwork radios a month at around £60 each.

His success has been recognised in a variety of ways, including an OBE is 1997 and a visit to see Nelson Mandela in 1996 at a state banquet.

And he will compete in an Oxford Union debate against Professor Robert May, a chief government scientist later this year arguing for greater commercial returns for inventors.

He said: "I invented the radio to improve my financial situation as well as help others. But there have been so many inventors who have invented wonderful machines such as the hovercraft who have died in poverty. This should not be allowed to happen."

A limited number of signed copies of Mr Baylis' book are available at Sweetens Bookshop.

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