RICHARD ORD: Caveman solutions that takes the biscuit

To keep your chocolate biscuits fresh... just add wall.

I know my children’s solution to this pressing issue would be to eat the biscuits in one sitting. And for those of you who answered: ‘Put them in a biscuit tin’, well, shame on you.

To keep biscuits in a newly-opened packet fresh, I fold the wrapper on the exposed side and lean it against a wall.

This ingenious solution is, in my eyes, on a par with the struggles faced by Stone Age man having to grapple with the complexities of skinning the carcass of freshly-caught mammoth using only what lay to hand. Just as he had no boning knife or hacksaw and had to fashion a cutting tool from the sharpest of rocks in his vicinity, so it was that I had to live by my wits and find a solution to the biscuit longevity issue.

He had no knives, I had no, erm, biscuit tin. We are, however, both survivors … just separated by millions of years.

As it happens, I do have a biscuit tin, but why bother rooting around cupboards for the tin when there’s a wall at the end of the kitchen bench?

And just as Stone Age man would have roared his delight at crafting a cutting tool from a smashed rock while beating his chest, so I too expressed my joy at the wall/biscuit freshness solution by raising an eyebrow and letting out satisfying ‘Huh!’. I need to get out more.

My pride at the biscuit solution was tempered somewhat by discovering I’m not alone. Turns out thousands of us do it. An Instagram post under the label of Very British Problems revealed just how common this move is. It said: ‘Shout-out to everyone who likes to seal a packet of biscuits by simply pushing the open end up against a wall.’ The post was liked by approaching 150,000 people.

I’d like to think that represents the small percentage of the population still able to use their mental facilities to the fullest in an age where simple ‘brainless’ solutions (like buying a biscuit tin or resealable Tupperware) are too readily employed.

Instead, judging by the looks I got this week when revealing my biscuit freshness hack, I fear I may be among 150,000 blokes who, by some strange quirk of fate, have brains barely functioning above those of prehistoric man. Food for thought...