I have two bits of dinner left on my plate, a large chicken breast and a hard-boiled chicken egg. This is the very scenario that started the whole chicken or egg debate…

Five thousand years ago, at the dawn of humanity, lived a family. This family lived in an abundance of food, vegetables, fruit, meat from cows, lambs, pigs, fish and chickens. Every night the family gathered around the dinner table to eat.

One night the meal centred on one lonely chicken. Her name was Chase. She died and her body was roasted alongside the final eggs she laid. Alongside vegetables, Chase and her eggs were the meal that night.

The man of the family always ate his vegetables first and so the last two items left on his plate were the chicken and the egg. He said, “What do I eat first, the chicken or the egg?”

Over thousands of revellings that question has become ‘What came first, the chicken or the egg?’

I ate the chicken first because the egg still had the shell on.