Now there are plenty of summer bachelors around, it seemed the right time to get back to cooking basics. The saga about how to cook an egg has been raging on ever since Delia Smith claimed to have perfected the method.

Some say put the egg in cold water and bring to the boil then simmer very gently for three minutes for a soft-boiled number. We say it depends on the egg… not just the size but whether or not it’s come straight from a cold fridge. If it has, three minutes probably won’t be enough, and you’d be advised to leave it for four.

Now the British have come up with a foolproof plan or two. The first is a new marking on British eggs that scheduled for introduction this autumn. Quite simply, it’s down to the stamp to tell you when your egg is done. Cunning eh?

But if peering into a pan of hot water doesn’t appeal, then Ben Harris, a student at Brunel has developed the PerfEGG. According to recent UK media reports it’s a piece of kit that cooks the egg at a temperature just under boiling, so the white congeals but the yolk stays runny.

This has to be a fitting follow-up to the toaster that tells the weather, invented a few years back by Robin Southgate from the same university. The toaster displays the day’s weather by producing dark weather symbols on the toast. Here’s how it works.

Apparently it makes use of an embedded Java device from Dallas Semiconductors called TINI, with the imaging being performed by dropping a heat resistant PTFE mask in front of the heating elements about 30 seconds before the toast is due to pop up. Robin taught himself Java to produce the device.

“Using a matrix we can get a display resolution of 11 by 11, which would give us a few isobars, or the temperature - there’s enough room for four readable characters,” says Robin.

The toaster dials a freephone number, which uses a cached weather forecast. “Any bread will do,” he adds. These chaps really know a thing or two about breakfast!