Children's TV favourite The Tweenies has been landed with a hefty bill after failing to buy out a Bradford mum.

The hugely popular BBC children's show was in full flow filming a new series with its latest addition, a dog character called Squiggles.

But BBC bosses were unaware that Thorpe Edge mum Julie Lancaster, pictured, already owned the rights to the name Squiggles, leaving them unable to use it and market any of the lucrative spin-off merchandising.

Julie, a former policewoman, had spent two years trying to realise her dream by developing her own pull-along toy and creating a cottage industry with her mother Maureen Morton to sell it.

But the 37-year-old, who has three children, was stunned to receive a flurry of e-mails and letters from a London-based firm asking her to sell the rights to the name Squiggles.

Pearson-Clarke Associates offered her thousands of pounds to sell them the rights to the name.

"I thought it was a joke at first but I wrote back and said I didn't want to sell it but the onus was on them to provide a reasonable price," Julie, of The Haven, said.

And the company kept who it was negotiating for under wraps.

"They said they were looking to spend £3,000 and I thought it was some sort of scam so I wrote back and said: 'Add a zero and I would seriously think about it'.

"It was really cloak and dagger for three months. At one point I said: 'Tell me who you are and what you are doing' because I was not prepared to work in the dark with anybody.

"They said they would not give out any information about the business or the product and I thought: 'Well I can't negotiate with someone like that'."

The company upped the bid to £15,000 but Julie missed the deadline to accept the offer.

Now Julie and husband Andrew are convinced it was the BBC trying to buy the name after it revealed it had to re-dub a run of programmes to give the dog a new name after failing to buy the rights to the Squiggles name.

Some estimates suggest the failed negotiations may have cost the BBC up to £500,000.

Julie, whose children Christian, 15, Megan, nine, and six-year-old Alexandra love the Tweenies, said she was disappointed that the deal fell through.

"I just thought: 'Oh no'. I couldn't believe it was the Tweenies, Andy rang the BBC and said we were prepared to negotiate.

"If we did know it was the Tweenies we would have loved to have a dog that was named by one of us. So if they had been frank with me we could have saved licence payers around £500,000."

But now the new playmate For Jake, Milo, Fizz, Bella and Doodles the dog is set to be called Izzles.

A spokesman for BBC Worldwide, which markets the Tweenies, said negotiations for the name would have been done through lawyers and the identity of the trademark owner wasn't known to them.

"All the initial check that were run on the name Squiggles didn't reveal this problem and it's only recently that it came to light.

"Since then we have done everything we can to sort it out but sadly that hasn't been possible.

"The name has now been changed to Izzles and the matter is closed."

The new series of the show, made by Tell-Tale productions, started yesterday with Izzles.

Nobody at Pearson Clarke Associates was available for comment.