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Bottle-top seal to foil drink spikers
By Elizabeth Hopkirk, Evening Standard Last updated at 00:00am on 11.11.04
the device could stop people spiking drinks
Marilyn Henshaw was out celebrating her 21st birthday with friends when she began to feel unwell, even though she had not been drinking.
Her friends realised something was wrong and took her straight home, but her father, Ray Lockett, was horrified and feared she could have become the latest victim of London's drug-rape epidemic.
So he used his expertise as an engineer to invent a device called a Spikey that is placed in the neck of a bottle and can't come out, to stop anybody adding drugs to the drink.
The contents can be drunk through a straw but the gap is too small for pills to be forced in. The device also glows in UV light, so everyone in a club or bar can see that the drink has been protected.
Mr Lockett hopes his invention will protect women from the threat of having their drinks spiked by predatory men. "It works really well," said Mr Lockett, 61, from Sussex, whose firm, R&G Products, is manufacturing Spikeys.
"I suppose the determined spiker could get something in but liquid would probably run down the straw and you could taste it.
"You wouldn't be able to spike a drink casually, as someone would notice it had been tampered with."
The Spikey is being launched today at the Groucho Club, but it has already passed successful trials at The Drink nightclub in Guildford.
R&G Products is now in detailed negotiations with several pub and club chains that could soon be using it in their premises.
Spikeys will cost 21/2p each and be supplied to the trade in boxes of 5,000. "It's not expensive so I just hope people will use them," said Ms Henshaw from Chesterfield.
"I was really careful with my drink and I don't know how anyone managed to slip anything in.
"It was really weird and really scary. I felt unsteady on my feet and very light-headed. I could see people talking to me but I couldn't hear them or react. I wasn't in control.
"It was like being really drunk, only I wasn't drinking because I had to go to work the next day.
"Spikey makes me feel a lot more confident about going out."
