Young Irish farmer Noel Marshall could have given a masterclass in sales skills to any one of the hundreds of inventors in the hall. By his own admission he was a beginner at this business. But, having somehow secured one of the most prominent stands at the International Exhibition of Inventions in Geneva last week, the 25-year-old's sales patter for his invention - the Bricky - was flowing thick and fast. In fact, with Noel's southern Irish accent it was probably a little too thick and a little too fast for much of his multinational audience, but his message was clear. My simple little device helps you lay bricks fast - really fast - the profit margins are gonna be huge, and I want to sell the idea to you.
Noel was one of a record 725 exhibitors showing off inventions at this annual gathering in Geneva, which claims to be the biggest show devoted to brand-new inventions anywhere in the world. It is held at the Palexpo Convention Centre, near the border with France and less than 10 minutes' drive from Cern, the particle physics lab where scientists routinely create antimatter, and someone called Tim Berners-Lee invented the world wide web a few years ago.
There was, of course, nothing at this show which could quite live up to that local heritage, but there was plenty to gawk at, from the highly specialised to the bizarre, from the beautiful to the strictly functional. To be allowed in, each exhibit had to have come into the public domain in the past year, and be patented. And, you quickly learned from every stallholder you spoke to, each exhibit represented a dream.
"I'm here because I know there's a lot of money to be made from this," says Marshall during a quiet moment at his booth, which has been transformed from dowdy cubicle to a little corner of the emerald isle, with flags, local newspaper cuttings, hurling sticks and a giant poster of his beloved Cork hurling team for which his brother plays.
The idea he is out to promote is so beguilingly simple, you wonder why it has not been invented before. Indeed, part of Noel's patter is that "this should have been invented a hundred years ago".
The Bricky is a mould which is placed on top of a row of bricks, into which the bricklayer puts the next layer of mortar. The mould gives a perfect depth and dimensions, and the next row of bricks can be quickly added.
Noel says he got the idea on December 27 last year, when he was trying to build an outhouse on his farm, and was "making a right dog's dinner of it". Now, he claims, bricklaying chums are able to work twice as fast.
"I'm not sure what I want to do with the idea," he says. "I might sell the rights, but only with commission, mind - I want a cut." He has banded together with his neighbour, Donnie Dennine, who he says is the marketing man - although he looks like he barely has need for one. Have you had any offers yet, I ask? "Oh yes," he says, without hesitation. "A million."
I don't believe him, although doubtless that's his target, and in pounds rather than lira.
Things are rather quieter a couple of aisles away in the tiny British enclave, tucked away among vast sections populated by inventors from Taiwan and eastern Europe.
Charles Brown is one of the handful of exhibitors to have crossed the Channel - he is here to show off his specialised metal grinder, which creates tiny metal shards from recycled metal useful for various industrial processes. He hopes to export his machine, made by a company in his native Sheffield, to continental customers.
"Why are there so few British exhibitors," I ask him. "Do they all go elsewhere to show their wares?" "No, no. It's just our amazing insularity," he says. "Something to do with the fall of the empire," he chuckles. Brown says it is a long-standing problem that he has noticed over his four decades doing the rounds. "That's what went wrong with the Sheffield steel industry in my view," he says. "They just didn't get overseas and visit their customers."
Insularity is also a word used by the assistant director of the show, Ann Loertscher, explaining the absence of any organised British presence. "For years I have been trying to get the department of trade and industry involved," she says, apparently mystified by the British intransigence. "We have been trying to tell them it is going to bring in foreign currency. And if they came they would be able to meet the French, the Germans, the Russians, and exchange ideas."
Today, she says, the Russians - celebrating their fifth year here - are the model delegation for every one of the 40 countries exhibiting. "They are supported by the ministry of technology and science, and the ministry of emergency situations, and they select who travels here according to their budget. The first year things were not so good, but since then they have made enormous progress," she says.
The inventions in the Russian section are certainly varied. There are new lubricants and welding processes, as well as inventions we might expect from the country, such as improvements to the process of drilling through perma-frost rocks and new ways to construct sturdier buildings on frozen ground. There is also the eccentric, including a double-strap device that holds an umbrella in place without the use of hands.
Indeed, that's the kind of eccentricity which many might expect from such a show, especially those weaned on the Great Egg Race. In the 80s TV programme, Lesley Judd and Professor Heinz Wolff presided over teams with inventions such as Flymos converted into remote-control hovercraft using only equipment found in a "typical" garage.
Mere mention of inventors' wild-haired, bad-jumpered reputations raises assistant director Loertscher's heckles. "Please don't say that," she says, firmly, before launching into what is clearly a well-rehearsed statement for the media on Why Inventors Might Be Eccentric, But Deserve Our Respect.
"Most of these inventors have day jobs and create in their free time," she says. "They might be developing a new cup for use in transport, or the highest technology thing imaginable, but they all deserve our respect.
"It is just that some spend all their time working on their inventions - the apples of their eyes - and struggle to explain their creations."
Some might, but not all. Back in the British enclave, another inventor is hard- selling his dream. Alan McGowan, an irrepressible Yorkshireman smartly dressed in a shirt which shows off his tatoos, has what he reckons is "the monster of the show": a 12-foot high hole-blasting device which uses compressed air and water rather than explosives for mining.
McGowan says his device could slash mining costs and save lives - not just of miners unlucky with sticks of dynamite, but in third world countries where it could be used to re-open dried up wells. Oh, and it could make him rich, too.
"ICI makes hundreds of millions a year from explosives, and there are 53 manufacturers of explosives in the world," he says. "This is cheaper - it cuts the cost of a 60ft hole from $44 to $4, and it's safer. They'll ban explosives when this goes on sale."
That, like our slick Irishman's million, might be just another dream.
But, even if their inventions failed to pass muster, that ambition alone makes the show an appropriate neighbour to the earth- shattering, atom-splitting laboratories of Cern.
From brilliant to the bizarre
Such was the sales pitch of Noel Marshall, inventor of the Bricky, that he managed to pick up the popular vote for best invention.
Jean-Pierre Sigrist, a director of the exhibition, presented Noel with his prize at the the show's annual awards ceremony on Friday night.
The evening was a celebration of the best of the show's offerings, all of which have to be brand new and patented to gain entry.
Winner of the Grand Prix prize - voted for by a 68-member jury and regarded as the most prestigious prize, even without a cash reward - was a Spanish plant pot. Its inventor claims it can cut up to three months off regular growth times for plant cuttings.
Jose-Luis Lleo Faura has already sold 23,000 Rooter Pots ahead of its official launch.
Also given an award was Swiss inventor Hanspeter Steffen who had created a new packaging for keeping food fresh, and Russian exhibitor Marina Bludyan who had developed a sophisticated protective mask.
Water Gate, a flexible water-filled barrier for containing floods and toxic spills developed by a Canadian team, also picked up several awards.
But not all inventions met with such acclaim. Professor Giuseppe Cirillo, founder of a Rome-based school of courtship and seduction, was still struggling to sell the concept of Chastity Pants. The pants, first reported in the Guardian last August, would record the length of time people removed their underwear, thus detecting infidelity.
