A British engineer has ensured that the British breakfast table will no longer be the scene of early-morning trauma and despair in which sobbing children and their distraught parents struggle to tackle that most demanding of disciplines: creating the perfect toast soldier with which to bother their boiled eggs.

Mike Minton, a 37-year-old engineer, has calculated that the ideal width for a toast soldier should be 22mm. He explained to Ananova: "There has always been a danger of cutting your soldiers too fat or too thin. If they are too fat then obviously they can't fit into the opened neck of the egg which is infuriating. But if the soldiers are too small then there's the risk of a catastrophic failure after they're dunked into the yolk. The simple act of withdrawing the soldier may cause it to break in half, forcing the person who is eating the egg to resort to a teaspoon."

We hear you Mike. The solution? Simple: a hand-held toast perforator which pre-prepares the bread for easy post-toaster action. And if you reckon this is the sort of invention which can be knocked up in a couple of minutes between inventing other life-saving devices - like a gyroscopic toast stabiliser which ensures that it always lands butter-side up, or indeed an SMS kettle - then rest assured that a whole year of development went into the "Perfect Soldier", which will go on sale soon for around six quid. Put us down for half-a-dozen. ®

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