Harry Potter Madness
01/07/2000 . Source: Jessica Martin 

Rhymes with cuddles?

Buy Harry Potter in the USA - or Buy Harry Potter in the UK

May you be cursed by success, runs an old Chinese proverb. One we wonder if JK Rowling - author of the terribly successful Harry Potter fantasy novels - may now be pondering.

There's been a wave of Harry Potter madness going on both sides of the Atlantic, with front page stories appearing in both the broadsheet and popular press.

You know the ones.

Children queue up for now novel with sleeping bags, publishers impose gagging clause on printers, new plot leaked, copies appear in US shops by mistake, Harry Potter piracy runs to new high in China, blah blah blah.

Now poor old Miss Rowling (or is it Mrs) has come under the spotlight with the announcement that her book's term for those that don't 'get' the magic - muggles - was already being used by author Carol Kendall in her novel The Gammage Cup (1959), albeit only as a character.

A rather tenuous link we feel. Rowling has already had to deal with the usual round of people crawling out of the woodwork to claim she has plagiarized their work.

For instance, author Nancy Stouffer, went after the Harry Potter books, claiming that Rowling got some 'ideas' for the Potter books from Stouffer's book, The Legend of Rah and Muggles (1984).

Stouffer uses the term "muggles" to refer to little people who care for two orphans.

Perhaps Rowling would be better off using the standard Fan term, 'mundanes' in her next work, as long as Piers Anthony doesn't take offense.

Still, Rowling can at least be consoled that veteran thesp., Maggie Smith - last seen in the award-winning 'Tea with Mussolini' - looks likely to play Professor Minerva McGonagall in the movie version of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone.

For those not in the know, Maggie's character is the deputy headmistress at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Hogwarts is of course the place of education where our Mr Harry Potter studies matters of magic.

With Warner's loot flowing in her direction (and her split of the not inconsiderable Mattel merchandising rights), the much harassed Ms Rowling will no doubt be able to make any number of law-suits disappear.

Almost like … magic!