John Chambers, 60, who lives in Old Town, sold more than 250 sets of Blackhole in just a week - making £5,000.

He first thought of the concept of the word game 20 years ago.

Mr Chambers said, "Following reading A Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawking I woke with an inspirational idea - to design a board game which would be fast open play scrabble on a monopoly type board. I named it Blackhole.

"However, since I was a business manager in Shell Chemicals UK and had three children to educate I did not want to take the risk of putting all my efforts into the game so it went dormant.

"When we moved two years ago the original board fell out of a cupboard at Christmas. The family played the game and my boys, now aged 36, 35, and 31, said, 'Well Dad, it's not as bad as we thought'."

Mr Chambers, who used to teach at Battle Abbey School, and his wife Fiona, a retired teacher from St Andrew's School, have spent a year developing the game, which involves combining vowels, consonants and combinations of sounds to form words while moving around a board.

They found a company to make the box and board, another to manufacture the word cards, and bought in plastic counters from China.

By last month the couple were ready to begin assembling it all at their home and hawking it around local Christmas fairs.

The game has a website at www.blackholegame.co.uk and the Banana Tree in Eastbourne is now stocking the product.

Mr Chambers said, "Last Monday I banked more than £2,500 from three days trading. While I was in the bank seven employees signed up for the game and they have placed a list in their canteen for those that are interested.

"Hamleys will talk with us next year about possibilities of the game being to be in its store but it is far too late to do it this year. It buys products in January and February for the next Christmas.

"Companies like Past Times and Gamleys and many others are now keen to talk to me.

"We wanted to produce a board game that would last less than an hour to be enjoyable for adults and children and to have educational value.

"I have heard the government say many times that it wants the family to bond closer together but, in my opinion, not much positive action has been taken.

"We felt that our board game could make a difference. Our teaching experience and my business experience was of great value in the design of the game.

"The design changed many times and now it has become a wonderful family board game, which is also for adults, university students, and people of all ages and abilities."

Mr Chambers plans to pitch his product in Europe next year and sell up to 150,000 games worldwide by 2009.