Denis: I'll settle for a bowl of Betty's hotpot

Feb 22 2010 By Denis Kilcommons

WOW, I thought, when I read that J K Rowling and her publisher Bloomsbury are being sued for £500 million. That knocks the Euro Lottery into a cocked hat.

Australian celebrity agent Max Markson claims that Rowling plagiarised a children’s book called Willy the Wizard by the late Adrian Jacobs and used chunks of it in Harry Potter And The Goblet Of Fire.

Max is acting on behalf of the family of Jacobs and confidently says: "I estimate it’s a billion-dollar case."

Rowling says the claims are unfounded and absurd.

"I am saddened that yet another claim has been made that I have taken material from another source to write Harry,’’ she says. "The fact is I had never heard of the author or the book before the first accusation by those connected to the author’s estate in 2004. I have certainly never read the book."

I doubt many people have. Mind you, it does have a recently created Willy the Wizard website attempting to perpetuate and support the claim. And this is the only place where you can actually buy a copy.

The website says that when Jacobs first offered it for publication a "literary agent advised him the work needed some re-writing and was densely packed with themes and ideas that needed expansion and development." In other words, it was rejected.