A Bradford inventor hopes to stimulate the creative side of the city's schoolchildren by launching a district-wide young inventors competition.

Pensioner Eddie Holden, who invented the Holden Highlights Light Build Exchanger, a device for removing light bulbs from high ceilings, has already approached a number of Bradford schools with his idea.

The brain wave came from a recent trip to his homeland of Galway in Ireland, where 62-year-old Mr Holden took his invention into the local school.

"When I asked for volunteers to use it, everyone's hands shot up," said Mr Holden, who began inventing when he was 25.

"The kids rushed forward to pull the bulbs off the end and I could see they were very enthusiastic.

"So I started a competition to find youth inventors in Galway schools and brought the idea back to Bradford with me."

Mr Holden - whose inventions, including a squirrel spinner to prevent squirrels eating birds nuts and a "whoosh machine" to prevent pigeons from perching on buildings, have been featured in the Telegraph & Argus - is to address the heads of design and technology departments at Bradford secondary schools at a meeting on June 11 at Laisterdyke High School.

"If you went round and asked children if they had ever covered the subject of inventions at school, I bet 1,000 would say it had not been brought up," he said.

"This is a brilliant idea to stimulate kids' minds and get them competing against one another.

"Instead of going home after school and putting their feet up in front of the TV, they could be drawing and designing.

"Then they would go back to school the next day discussing it with their friends."

Mr Holden, who is working on four top secret inventions, put his idea to Brian Russell, head of design and technology at Dixons City Technology College in Bradford.

It has a young engineers club, members of which have worked on Robot Wars and Green Power Challenge.

"I think it would be a great idea because design and technology is so big at this school," said Mr Russell,

"There may well be a lot of interest in this - we would certainly be interested - but it does need discussing with more schools.

"If there's something running locally, we try to participate. It is difficult for kids to come up with totally new inventions so we could use Mr Holden's skills."

Mr Russell said the competition could be held in July next year to coincide with National Design and Technology week.