A WOMAN who officially changed her name to Tinker Bell is fuming after her wish for a new passport was not granted. Film fairy lover Natalie Bell, 41, switched by deed poll last year. She then applied for a passport with her new name, Natalie Tinker Bell the Real Goddess Bell. However she was told […]
A WOMAN who officially changed her name to Tinker Bell is fuming after her wish for a new passport was not granted.
Film fairy lover Natalie Bell, 41, switched by deed poll last year.
The fairy-lover was forced to seek permission from Disney and then Great Ormond Street Hospital to use the name[/caption]
She then applied for a passport with her new name, Natalie Tinker Bell the Real Goddess Bell.
However she was told Tinker Bell — the fairy in Peter Pan — was Disney’s property and she needed its permission.
Natalie wrote off to Walt Disney Studios and waited two months for a reply — before being told it was fine.
However the passport office then told her that London’s Great Ormond Street Hospital actually owned the copyright — having been gifted it by Peter Pan author JM Barrie in 1929.
Natalie, of Fulham, West London, contacted the hospital which said it was OK as long her plan was not to make money from her new name.
She contacted the passport office again — but said she was mocked by a member of staff who “burst out giggling” when told her new name.
Natalie said: “It’s ridiculous. I can’t keep going back and forth about this.
“I felt that the examiner at the passport office was mocking me. I heard giggles during the conversation. They were laughing at me.”
She added, six months after her original passport application: “I want to be called Tinker Bell. I have a love for Disney and the fairy world.”
Getting one’s name changed on a passport should normally take between three and five weeks.
A Home Office spokesperson said: “We do not routinely comment on individual cases.”
Tinker Bell first appeared in Barrie’s 1904 play Peter Pan and was brought to life in the 1953 Disney classic.
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