MAN would not have invented the wheel if I had been in charge all those years ago, stirring the pea soup, as the wings of pterodactyls darkened the skies over Birkenhead and the young Ken Dodd rode between variety caves on his unicorn – frightening off the sabre- toothed tigers with his colourful quiver of tickling sticks.

And to be politically correct about this, woman would not have invented it either, though she was poised to make startlingly bold progress with the pneumatic drill, cordless kettles, the box-kite, boomerangs, the vacuum cleaner and recycling bins.

Imagine the gentle pastures of my domain, where the mammoth snoozes and the dynamic banker links daisies into a chain. The rumble of the wheel has never been heard and that ban extends to the stone-roller, on which the hapless slaves of estate agents once dragged colossal rocks along the River Nile’s banks, stopping off at the desirable sites granted planning permission for new Pyramids.

It was my late mother, the possessor of canny powers of prophecy, who noted, after seeing me struggle with the assortment of rattles strung across the front of my pram, that I was a slow learner. "Temperamentally unsuited to the wheel," she added, pursing her lips and nodding sagely.

Her fears were confirmed a few years later when the crazes for two wheel-based novelties swept across the playgrounds and social halls of Britain. First was the hula- hoop and then came the yo-yo. At this point, I should explain that I am essentially a four- legger, squeezed reluctantly into the bi-pedal pose by the forces of evolution.

"I wonder if he will ever walk?" my anxious mother whispered to herself, as I whizzed across the carpet, with my dimpled and not yet entirely trustworthy bottom passing the coffee-table at about the same height as the refined curate’s plate of cheese fancies. "He lacks co-ordination and balance," she added, prophetically.

And no sooner had I managed to adopt an upright position than I noticed go-ahead contemporaries spinning these hula- hoops round their waists at ever- greater speeds. "All you have to do is thrust and back and forth and rotate your hips in a rhythmic manner," they said. "Go on, have a go!" So I had a go and the hula-hoop fell to the ground in less time than you could say "man on the moon" without at any point making contact with me.