You thought wheeled luggage was clever? Wait ’til you hear this...

Phillip Adams wonders whether the ingenuity of the wheeled suitcase can be applied to other forms of life... or death.

As you know, I was the first person to win three Nobel Prizes in a single year. In Physics, in Economics and in Peace. While the prize monies were welcome, my efforts were not motivated by filthy lucre but by my ongoing and entirely altruistic desires to ease the suffering of humanity. By taking the lugging out of luggage.

Luggage is a part of human baggage. It has been around for some considerable time, as have wheels. But it was Adams who came up with the simple, singular innovation of bringing them together. Voilà! My invention of wheeled luggage. Shortly after my devising of roller skates and skateboards.

Let us recall the wheel’s history. It was invented in the 4th millennium BC in Mesopotamia (today’s Iraq) when the Sumerians inserted rotating axles into solid discs of wood. It was only in 2000BC that said discs began to be hollowed out to make a lighter model. Then the Zarathustrians came up with bespoke wheels. With spokes, celebrated in Friedrich Nietzsche’s Thus Spoke Zarathustra.

The invention of the wheeled suitcase has significantly increased the ease in which people travel today.

The origin of luggage, specifically of the suitcase, is not known – although fossil records suggest that the suitcase pre-dates the invention of the suit. Ancient hieroglyphic texts talk of “carrying heavy baggage” as a form of punishment inflicted on sinners by the priestly castes. The earliest known suitcases are on display at the British Museum and are pre-Roman, most probably Etruscan.

But nobody thought of putting them together, not for 10,000 years until one February morning in 1980 when, in a Eureka moment, I was heard to cry: “Put wheels on suitcases!” As you know, I extrapolated from this original invention to make the wheelie bin – the idea of putting wheels on dustbins. I’m not here to exult in my past achievements, though, but to announce a completely new product line. Wheeled coffins.

Funerals are very labour intensive. And one of the most difficult problems is manoeuvring a heavy coffin in and out of the church. It also requires hard work getting them in and out of the hearse and hence into cemetery and grave.

As I’ll be heading in that direction myself in the not too distant future I’ve decided to put the fun back into funerals by making the wheeled coffin my final contribution to civilisation. Instead of requiring six burly pallbearers to carry the encased deceased, my design means that five of them will no longer be necessary. Just the one pallbearer who, in fact, will not be bearing the pall but simply wheeling it. A pall-wheeler if you please.

My idea is already sweeping the industry. We’re not reinventing the wheel – we’re simply using the design employed on supermarket trolleys, another of my inventions. (Yes, sometimes they are a bit squeaky and get the wobble, but nobody’s perfect). And unlike the supermarket trolley or wheelie bin, the wheelie coffin will be used just once. With wooden wheels for those choosing cremation. Earlier adopters will be awarded FFPs – Frequent Funeral Points – and are directed to my website.

Let us join our voices in my wheelie hymn. Like a circle in a spiral / Like a wheel within a wheel / Never ending or beginning / On an ever spinning reel. It’s amusical tribute to the wheelie-bins of my mind.