FOR A MAN who lost out on one of music's biggest earners, Daisuke Inoue is in fine form with a toothy smile spread over the big, rough-hewn face of a natural comedian.
The good humour comes in useful for interviews when he's inevitably asked if he regrets not patenting the world's first karaoke machine, which he invented in 1971.
After 34 years, during which his unlikely contraption has conquered every corner of the globe, accompanied by the sound of a billion strangled, drink-sodden voices, the question must sound like the whistling of an approaching bomb. But the smile stays.
'I'm not an inventor,' says the 65-year-old in his small Osaka office. 'I simply put things that already exist together, which is completely different. I took a car stereo, a coin box and a small amplifier to make the karaoke. Who would even consider patenting something like that?'
'Some people say he lost US$150 million,' says Inoue's friend and local academic Robert Scott Field. 'If it was me I'd be crying in the corner, but he's a happy guy who loves people. I think it blows his mind to find that he has touched so many people's lives.'
Thanks to TV specials and a recently released movie biopic, many in Japan now know that Inoue was a rhythmically challenged drummer in a dodgy Kobe covers band when he hit on the idea of pre- recording his backing tracks.