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!
We’re nearly half way through the tour now and today we had a break to listen to someone else singing for a change – at a cool choir competition in Harrow!
The choir were magnifique – although not quite as good as my singing!
Apparently a very famous kind of choir was invented right here in Harrow called a Glee Club!
Now I’ve heard of fleas but don’t know anything about glees!
According to Big Joe, a glee is an old fashioned kind of song. It’s very short and is sung by a group of people. It used to originally be just male voices but then also female or mixed voices.
Glee Clubs were very popular in the UK in the 1800s but they fell out of fashion and aren’t really around much today – although you still get them in American colleges!
So I decided we should try and bring Glee Clubs back to the UK!
I had an idea of creating our own and calling it Nancy’s Barkalong Song Club! We could get everyone singing all the tunes from our show!
Big Joe thought it was a great idea and so he went off to apply for a trade mark and register the name and I set about finding some singers!
It was all going really well but then I saw on the internet that someone had set up a rival club called Nancy and the Meerkats Barkalong Pong Club!
I bet you can guess who the owner was… yep, that festering feline Kitty Perry again!
She really is determined to spoil things isn’t she? And all the songs were really mean!
It’s a good thing we own the trade mark to the name Nancy and the Meerkats as Big Joe pointed out it means Kitty Perry can’t use our name or our songs – even to be mean – without us agreeing to it as we own the copyright! Oui! Oui!
What is a trade mark?
A trade mark is a sign which can distinguish your goods and services from those of your competitors.
A trade mark allows you to take legal action against anyone who uses your brand without your permission, put the ® symbol next to your brand – to show that it’s yours and warn others against using it – and to sell and license your brand.
And we’ve registered the name of the song club too! That means new names have to be different enough so that people won’t be confused!
Big Joe says she can have her own singing club but it’s very likely she’ll have to come up with a totally different name!
I think she should call it Kitty Perry’s Very Hairy Club!
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!