Punching the air in euphoria

There is an inventor so shy that although he has created more than anyone else. He is too reserved to paperclip his name to any of his creations, and he never spoke about them to any of his friends. He would keep it all a secret from his wife, while he was in his office he pretended he was writing letters to elderly relatives, or trying to trace his family tree.

It started as a child when experimenting in his kitchen, when he created the aftertaste of Camembert, after deciding that the cheese lacked something. At this stage it was still a hobby, and he thought it was something that everybody did. But without him nobody would ever have experienced the hugely popular tapping of your foot when you hear a song you like.

Where would we be without bands influenced by The Kinks ' his first invention after turning professional.
"I did not invent the flake. He continually had to reiterate. "And I did not invent ice-cream I am simply responsible for the insertion.

Archive footage was found by the South Bank Show -a home recording by one of his nieces of the moment that he created pathos. It had taken months of planning, and once he finally worked out the correct formula, he accidentally invented "punching the air in euphoria, regularly used by winning snooker players and inexperienced lovers. Another accidental invention was the squat-thrust, which he discovered after slipping over, while trying to tie a shoelace.

But his most successful invention, the last thing he did before he died, was to create thinking of good ideas when there is nowhere to write them down. If he had found a way to market it, he would have been richer than Google.