Mike Keenan
Fire Proofing Products

SUNDAY TIMES MAGAZINE
Article: Inventors & invention - Eureka UK by Peter Martin

“Gentlemen, I am now going to show you something you have never seen before - and you probably won’t believe it.” The brave words were those of David Nicholas, addressing a gathering of fifty government scientists at the Defence and Evaluation Agency (now Qinetiq)), at Farnborough, Hampshire. Nicholas, of Business Link Wessex, was introducing Mike Keenan and just one of his truly incredible inventions.

Keenan, a painter and decorator by trade, was understandably nervous: “Me, in front of all these guys with brains as big a buses.” First, like a busker with a magic show, he drew a number of materials - paper, cloth, plastic resin and wood - from a battered suitcase. Next, he subjected each one to the roaring white heat of a blowtorch. Only the paper became thoroughly scorched, but it didn’t ignite. For a grand finale, he covered his hand in a grease he’d formulated himself, and aimed the blowtorch at a range of one half of an inch, with no harmful effect. Qinetiq’s boffins exploded into applause, then crowded around Keenan to ask all sorts.

“Mike stands to make millions and millions and millions,” said Nicholas, who has unrivalled experience of getting British inventions to market. In Keenan’s case, well, consider: fireproof building materials of every sort, including paint; everything inside a home, factory and office block made fireproof. But try getting your mind around this: fireproof petrol and aviation fuel. Yes, our man can chemically treat both so that, in the event of a crash or dangerous spillage, the fuel gives off a fire-dampening gas that’s not activated during ordinary combustion.

Keenan’s a bloody miracle. He comes from Essex, had a rubbish education and, on first meeting, appears as quick as a potato. Yet by doing what the best of lone inventors do - following his passion through skint and skinter - he turned himself into a world-beating chemist. He’s a classic in another sense, too. No expert to start with, and therefore “not knowing any better”, he thought: “What if?” Sir Christopher Cockerell was like that. He’d have never been able to invent the Hovercraft, so he reckoned, had he been a trained naval architect because he would have “known” that it couldn’t possibly work. Conversely, and with a twinkle, he liked to “prove” to engineers that fish couldn’t swim.

For Keenan, it started with an odd discovery back in 1974. On a job in a power station, he’d been burning out some old paint tins for re-use, and poking the fiery clumps with a stick, when he noticed that the stick just wouldn’t burn. The floor of the power station was thick with fuel ash and, somehow, it had made the stick fireproof.

Intrigued, when next in his local library - looking for jobs in the gratis newspapers - he asked for some books on chemistry. Next, he bought just £8’s worth of chemicals, “Which sort of did my £10 petrol money for the week.” From then on, he couldn’t, wouldn’t, leave it alone. Give him anything - MDF or the stuff they make TV casings out of - and he’d find a way to fireproof it.

Now a garden-shed widow, his wife, Rita, was a martyr to patience. “Look, Reet! Fireproof rubber!” It’s a wonder he didn’t kill himself. To demonstrate fireproof polystyrene, he filled a soft cup with petrol and aimed a blowtorch at it. Astonishingly, all this was just a hobby - for 5 years, 10, 15. But in 1990 he went to ask his bank manager for a loan, for a van. “Really, just to show him I wasn’t a guy to spend money on drink - that I had other interests, like - I showed him this fireproof cheque. He’d never seen one of those before! And when I pulled out me blowlamp and gave ’em a demonstration, all the bank staff seemed so impressed, I thought: ‘Oh.’”

Now taking his fiery magic show on the road, he stunned and amazed nationwide but no one came close to offering him a deal. Aware of the origin of the King’s Cross disaster, escalator grease, he approached the new-products boss at London Underground - not just offering his fireproof grease, but fireproof cardboard cladding for the Tube’s miles of dust-thick spark-combustible power cables, oh, a whole list of clever things. But, as Keenan tells it, he got very short shrift. “Companies, generally, don’t like outsiders coming up with stuff.” On and off, he was busking his inventions for fully eight years before Business Link’s Nicholas heard tell of him. But one look, and Nicholas - who had good defence department contacts - had the boffins from Qinetiq assemble.

These two years on, Keenan is poised to bring the first of his inventions to market; but he’s so prolific a chemist-inventor, this one is nothing to do with fireproofing. Every car manufacturer in the world has drain-

grilles on the floors of their spray-shops from which it is nigh on impossible to clean the paint. Or it was until Keenan came up with a cheap, quick, solvent coating. An agent for Fiat’s tractor division was the first to snatch Keenan’s arm off, and now Honda, Lotus and Ford want a piece, too. Millions and millions and millions then. Meanwhile, Keenan continues to scuffle gratefully between painting and decorating jobs.

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Secret formula:

Probably the best invention in the world.!. Mike's secret formula can also be used as a liquid coating on newspaper making it fireproof and impervious to water; be incorporated into materials at the manufacturing stage, tests on Mike's heat resistant plastic have proven that there is no transfer of heat.

Mike worked on a grease that would be fire resistant without losing any of its lubrication properties. He succeed and this is demonstrated by Mike in the photograph on the cover of The Naked Inventor Calendar.

Awards
CRTI founder member Mike Keenan and his amazing Totally Fireproof Products, a top secret formula that will fireproof most materials, including foam, paper, fabric, plastic and rubber, scooped:
Gold award for: Science
Gold award for: Environment
Gold award for: Manufacturing
Gold award for: Safety & security
Best Inventor of Europe Award

The ultimate winner of winners "Grand Prix award" at the Worlds top invention show, INPEX, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA, on Saturday 15th May, beating over 1,500 inventors from 32 Nations of the World. Mike also won: Gold award for Science, Gold award for Environment, Gold award for Manufacturing, Gold award for Safety & Security, Best Inventor of Europe Award and a Cheque for $5,000

Contact details:

	South East London UK
	michaelkeenan@eastlondoninventorsclub.com