Bonjour! It’s Nancy here – from the soon-to-be world famous pop group Nancy and the Meerkats!
After our first record “Put Your Paws Up” became a massive hit, we’re off on a huge tour of the UK!
We haven’t quite made it to stadium status yet – some of the venues are more Weeny than Wembley – but I’m going to be letting you know what’s been going on each day in my journal for Fun Kids!
The band are back in London at the moment for the next step of our UK tour! We’re all set for tonight’s gig but there was a pretty serious problem with the venue earlier!
Not that I knew anything about it though! I was far too busy with my headphones on listening to Swan Direction – I love them!
I think my headphones are my favourite invention ever! It’s so amazing how they can make it sound like the band are right there, singing just for me!
Big Joe says its thanks to the stereo sound technology. Apparently a guy called Alan Blumlein at EMI came up with the idea over 80 years ago – long before ‘Swan D ‘were around!
He was at the cinema with his wife and back in those days there was just one set of speakers pumping out exactly the same words and music.
It meant it could sound pretty weird if a character was meant to be on the left and the sound was coming out on the right!
The good news for me is that Mr Blumlein found a way to make it sound more realistic – and the technology is still being used today!
He sounds like a pretty cool guy actually – Big Joe told me that Blumlein received 128 patents in his day and was considered as one of the most significant engineers and inventors of his generation!
What is patenting?
A patent protects inventions.
How they are work, what they do, how they do it, what they are made of and how they are made. It means that no-one can copy, make, sell or import your invention without your permission.
Anyway, back to this big problem we had… actually, it was to do with stereos!
The speaker hire company said they’d only got one set of stereo speakers and someone else had booked them out for tonight!
Guess who? That tatty old tabby Kitty Perry of course, trying to ruin our show!
So I put my inventing hat on and came up with a genius solution (if I do say so myself) – a singalong concert! People love singing the words to our tracks so I thought we could make tonight’s show all about the audience!
With everyone singing together we’ll raise the roof!
Listen to this episode of Nancy and the Meerkats below…
And if you want to get really creative, make sure you check out how to protect your cracking ideas! Click here to find out more!
Nancy and the Meerkats is supported by the Intellectual Property Office.
Click here to find out more!
