The notion that inventors are anorak-wearing crackpots with glasses held together with Sellotape is beguiling but wrong.

All inventors, they say, are a little mad. I reckon that only completely sane people are willing to admit they are slightly crazy.

I'd work eighteen-hour stretches and fall asleep in my clothes. Then I'd wake up in the middle of the night, brew a pot of tea, and start work again. I was tired, but work had become pure enjoyment.

That was the Alka-Seltzer moment, the moment when the tablet hits the water and begins to fizz.

The notion that inventors are anorak-wearing crackpots with glasses held together with Sellotape is beguiling but wrong.

A good idea turns every cog in your mind, making you scared of bed in case the whole machine grinds to a halt.

But there is only one person I blame for getting shafted, and that's myself. I went into the deal which I thought would secure the future of Orange Aids with culpable impetuosity. I had been used to doing business on a handshake and my work of honour, and I made the error of actually believing what the men in the pin-striped suits told me.