IT'S so darn difficult these days to be first - and it's getting harder all the time.

I don't mean first in a track race, or first in the queue at the great Boxing Day sale, but to be the first man or woman on earth to do something really mindboggling.

As man straightened his back, got off all fours and started walking upright all those aeons ago, it must have been easy, although downright dangerous.

For instance, who was the first man to make fire, and how did he know not to put his hand in to touch this wonder? No soothing Savlon around in those days.

After fire, who was the first man to decide to cook meat? And did the first man to eat raw pork - and feed it to his kids - wonder why they were all writhing around with stomach ache and dropping down dead? I wonder if his last words were: "Make sure the pork's properly cooked for three hours at Regulo 4."

Now which clever chap - or Stone Age Nigella - decided that if you cut down a few heads of corn, grind it into dust, add water and yeast and bake the dough, you miraculously have bread? And what was the best thing before sliced bread?

As a young boy on my first trip into the countryside with its wide open fields, I honestly wondered if I were the first person ever to have trodden on a particular patch of earth. It was an eerie feeling, and I never gave a thought to the farmer who ploughed and sowed that field day in, day out.

My brash young colleagues say I'm so old I probably was the first man to walk the earth. What they don't realise is that every ageist comment is carefully recorded - time, date and remark - so that when I eventually have a breakdown under the pressure of these jibes I can sue the company for £10 million and retire in luxury. "Have you had a trip, slip or fall - or a breakdown - at work that wasn't your fault? Call Scavenger Solicitors now and it won't cost you a penny."

Anyway, back to my musings, and this one's important: I want to know who was the first man (it's bound to have been a man) to discover that if you soak a few hops, add sugar and stuff and let it go off, you have beer, that wonderful concoction that can make you feel so good and so bad in equal parts.

And when he took the screw cap off the resultant brew round the fire in his cave and sampled the vintage, did he apologise to his wife, Ug, in the morning?

Who wrote the very first dictionary, and why didn't he and all the others who followed him - like Mr Concise Oxford and Mr Chambers - make it so that even if you can't spell a word, you can still find it to check the spelling?

Now here's one. We all know that iron sinks in water. So which bright spark took the gamble of investing all his groats and ducats to build a ship out of metal?

Who was the first woman to dream up the idea of bras, and to wear stiletto heels - and why? Whoever she was, she's had generations of females tottering and teetering since.

On a personal note, I'll bet it was a man who invented tights, probably at the insistence of his crusty wife.

He should be thoroughly ashamed of himself for creating something so ugly (and did you know that nylon got its name from being simultaneously developed in New York and London?).

So what can I do to actually be first at something? Perhaps invent a chamois leather wringer-outer for a one-armed window cleaner.

Or a talking pedometer that chats to you as you hike; a pocket body fat monitor to check your body fat anywhere, anytime; a portable unisex urinal kit to keep in your car for times of need; or a windproof umbrella that cannot turn inside out.

Sod it. They've all been thought of in the Innovations catalogue.

Updated: 10:59 Tuesday, July 12, 2005