Ever since a Blue Peter presenter first uttered the words "sticky back plastic" and "here's one I prepared earlier", egg boxes and toilet rolls have been the sine qua non of any self-respecting lunar space station or cardboard crocodile.
As any parent will tell you, without those two essential ingredients the expression of youthful creativity through the medium of household detritus is severely compromised. In the words of one mother, "They are absolutely essential. How can you make a stegosaurus without them?"
Not surprising then that the same mother was appalled when she learnt that there were some schools (fortunately, not her own children's) where these treasures are withheld from pupils on "health and safety" grounds.
One such example is the Wallands Primary School in East Sussex. A casual visitor to Lewes's most popular primary would rummage in vain through the classroom collection bins, which are used to house the old cereal packets and plastic containers donated by parents, to find any illicit egg containers or used toilet rolls. Anyone who attempts to bring them into school can expect to have them confiscated or sent back home for fear that they could transmit diseases to the pupils.
For many parents the ban will represent yet another example of a national paranoia at exposing people, in particular children, to risk. Parents across the country already experience the irritation of having to come into school during class time to administer drugs because the teachers refuse to dose children themselves, but a ban on egg boxes is the sort of apparently ludicrous restriction that the prime minister has vowed to crack down on. In a recent speech he highlighted a couple of cases of public bodies behaving in "highly peculiar and risk averse ways": the local authority that removed hanging baskets for fear they might fall on someone's head and the Cotswold village that pulled up a see-saw because it was judged to be a danger under an EU directive.
But how are these sorts of decisions reached, and who is responsible? I spent a month trying, and ultimately failing, to get to the bottom of the East Sussex egg box ban.
For the exasperated headmaster of Wallands such rules are an unavoidable part of the job. "It's the sort of thing we get the whole time these days," sighs Brian Davies, who has been head for the past eight years. "We have even been advised to put signs on the flat roofs, warning thieves who try to walk on them that they might fall off and hurt themselves."
Davies, who has been enforcing the ban for longer than he can remember, is unsure exactly why his pupils are not allowed egg boxes, only that the county council had told him they were unsafe. He thinks it may have something do with fears that salmonella could be transmitted to children.
Everyone, including Davies, thinks this is absurd. A spokeswoman for the Health and Safety Executive says she cannot believe it and the Department for Education and Skills says it is rather puzzled by it all.
Dr Chris Dodd, a reader in food microbiology at Nottingham University's school of biosciences, is also bemused. "If your egg box has a British Lion standard mark on it then that means it has been vaccinated against salmonella enteritidis, the main strain that caused so many problems during the Edwina Curry era.
"You could, however, still get some bacteria on the outside of the egg, after all, eggs come out of the wrong end of the chicken from a hygiene point of view. But even then it is very rare to find an egg covered with feathers and other unacceptable matter in a supermarket because most of the really bad ones get screened out.
"But even if there was a bit of bacteria on the outside of the egg it wouldn't transfer to the cardboard because of the lack of moisture. The bacteria just cannot survive extended periods of desiccation." So, what does Dodd make of the East Sussex ban? "I would say there is only a very, very small risk. Even at the peak of the salmonella scare egg boxes were never an issue, the problem was more about how chicken was cooked."
Egg boxes are a new one to her, but she has heard that toilet rolls are unpopular in many schools. Again, she is unimpressed by the level of risk.
"There is only a remote chance of transmission or faecal contamination," says Dodd. "After all, it's the stuff around the cardboard rather than the cardboard itself that gets handled."
To get to the bottom of the mystery Brian Davies says I should contact Karen Terry, the health and safety supremo at East Sussex County Council. She knows all about this sort of stuff and will get back to me soon, a press officer called Martin tells me.
Terry never did get back to me and nor did Martin for that matter, leaving me to try to work out the possible reasoning behind the egg box ban for myself.
A problem that is often cited is teachers' terror of ambulance chasing compensation lawyers. At this year's meeting of the National Association of Schoolmasters Union of Women Teachers in Brighton, hundreds of delegates spent almost an entire day debating this modern-day evil, arguing that the "compensation culture" was making important parts of children's education, such as school trips, too dangerous to consider.
"It seems that society has lost the concept of the genuine accident," says Chris Keates, the union's general secretary. "People are being encouraged by television adverts put out by no-win, no-fee lawyers into making completely spurious claims in the hope that they get an out-of-court settlement. They are prepared to chance their arm if they think they will get some money out of it."
Perhaps this is the key to the Wallands mystery? The fear of a big legal bill if a child, in the course of building an armadillo out of a cardboard carton that once contained raw eggs, got a nasty bout of salmonella.
According to Janet Paraskeva, chief executive of the Law Society, the idea that the country has a compensation culture is an "incorrect perception". "In fact, Britain spends less on compensation than any other industÂrialised country. In recent years accident claims, far from rising, have remained static and then fell last year by 9.5 per cent."
Even if the compensation culture does not exist, the perception that it does can be just as potent. So potent that the government is to introduce a Compensation Bill to limit the work done by so-called claims-farmers - the intermediaries who pass accident victims on to solicitors - and clarify the law on negligence to make it clear that people cannot sue over genuine accidents.
A second problem is that those in charge of regulating our lives seem to be excessively cautious and will attempt to eliminate risk if they possibly can.
"All the incentives are one way," says Jonathan Rees, deputy director general of the Health and Safety Executive. "As long as things don't go wrong, schools will be seen as enlightened for allowing children to get on with things. If things go wrong, they will be blamed and people will ask how it was allowed to happen."
The HSE is, of course, something of a national Aunt Sally, constantly blamed for lunatic decisions taken by companies and public authorities - it was recently evoked during the fuss caused by the City of London's plan to close the swimming ponds on Hampstead Heath. Rees says the HSE only ever recommends "sensible" risk assessment and the popular view of the body damages the cause of health and safety.
Nonetheless, the misapplication of seemingly sensible regulations does appear to be a problem. Could that be what went wrong in East Sussex? Did such a misapplication lead to the egg box ban?
I give the press office another ring. "No one's got back to you yet?" asks an apologetic Martin, who admits that two weeks probably ought to have been enough time for someone to give me an answer to the egg box issue. Apparently Karen Terry has been away, so that's probably why there was no answer to the riddle yet. Still, Martin is now back on the case, giving me a bit of time to call up Barnaby Marsh, an academic at Oxford whose work focuses on integrating biological, economic and psychological models for a better understanding of strategic decision making.
He suspects whoever was responsible for banning egg boxes was probably not so much motivated by terror of compensation lawyers, or even the HSE, but by a force of nature. "What we see in both humans and animals is a disproportionate sensitivity to the downside of risk. It is why we are so fascinated by risk, why we love talking about it and why we love reading about things that can go wrong, no matter how remote the chances. And that's something that's not going to go away.
"What is new, however, is how that sensitivity to risk has been amplified by the flow of information in the modern world. One hundred years ago people were simply less aware of all the things that posed them harm, now we are constantly reminded by the media of all the things that could kill us."
It is a theme echoed by Teresa Graham, deputy chairman of the Better Regulation Task Force, a body that has been advising the government on how it can tackle the "compensation culture".
"The media have a huge role to play in all of this. The stories about people slipping in the street, blaming someone else and suing for £20m get reported every day. What does not get reported is the fact that they are thrown out by the judge in five seconds."
But it is not just journalists who appear to be busily "amplifying" our natural fear of risk; companies are becoming increasingly adept at pushing the fear buttons when trying to sell products.
"I get letters and e-mails every day from commercial companies trying to persuade me to spend money," says headteacher Brian Davies. "I received one today warning me that new government legislation means you can be fined up to £20,000 if you don't take proper precautions to stop children from tripping. I haven't the faintest idea whether that's true, but it is a fairly typical example of a company trying to scare the life out of me."
He was also being bothered by a company called Insight Security that was promoting a range of products designed to stop children trapping their fingers in doors.
The website of the self-styled "one stop security shop" shows an angelic, perfectly formed child the moment before her little hands are about to be crushed in a door. There is some text: "A gust of wind, a thoughtless moment, a playtime prank, whatever the cause, government figures show over 30,000* are injured every year by trapping fingers in doors . . . leaving more than 1,500 needing some form of amputation or corrective cosmetic surgery.
Beneath this is a picture of a tear-stained little face, presumably one of the country's 30,000 door victims, in the moment after finger crushing. No wonder headmasters like Davies would rather err on the side of caution.
The text continues: "Remember - crushed finger injuries are a traumatic experience for the victim which can leave them scarred for life both physically and mentally - don't let it happen to your child."
Davies seems quite impressed with the hinge guards on offer but questions whether the school can afford them. I wonder whether they really are such a good idea and whether running the risk of breaking a few fingers may not actually be a formative experience that teaches children to avoid slamming their hands in doors.
Digby Jones is with me on this one. The director-general of the Confederation of British Industry recently told the annual meeting of the National Association of Head Teachers that children were being raised to believe that risk did not exist because they were constantly being told 'Don't play conkers in the playground, you might get hurt. Don't do backstroke in the swimming pool, you might bump into somebody.'
"When they leave school they are going to get the shock of their lifetime because out there, in the big bad world, risk exists every day. Unless we educate children about risk, get them to understand it, to embrace it and exploit it, then we will fail as a nation."
The idea that risk is good for you is being applied, tentatively, in London street planning. In an attempt to slow traffic, Exhibition Road is to have its safety barriers, street signs and traffic lights removed in an effort to make that stretch of Kensington a little more treacherous. The idea is to reduce "risk compensation" whereby people behave more dangerously if they feel safe - in other words, people wearing seat belts designed to reduce risk will drive more dangerously.
All of which makes getting to the bottom of the egg box ban seem more pressing. Every day that a East Sussex school child is denied interaction with an egg box, I tell myself, is another day when their education remains incomplete. Another day when they run the risk of growing up to become adults with no notion of how to deal safely with food packaging.
I resolve to speak directly to Karen Terry with or without the help of Martin and I finally get hold of her by repeatedly calling her line. By the time we speak, it has been more than three weeks since I first called her department and was told by one of her colleagues that all such inquiries had to go through the press office. The experience of talking to her is slightly unsettling - she does not sound like the paranoid health and safety zealot I was expecting. She is happy to help.
Yes, she knows the FT is on a quest to get to the bottom of the egg box ban. In fact, she has just been chatting about it with a colleague when I happen to call. Unfortunately, she doesn't know why they're banned either and suggests I talk to the DfES and the HSE.
This I do and they assure me that while they are in charge of many things, they leave decisions over egg boxes to local education authorities. On relaying this to Karen, she agrees to delve further into the matter but warns me to be patient: her senior management team will have to be consulted because these sorts of issues "cannot be discussed on the phone".
She also suggests that I contact the Consortium of Local Education Authorities for the Provision of Science Services (CLEAPSS), whose mission is to promote practical science teaching in schools. She says the advice on egg boxes, like most other policies affecting science and technology teaching (and art classes in primary schools), would have come from that organisation.
CLEAPSS begs to differ.
"They are talking absolute nonsense and wildly overreacting," says John Tranter, a biologist and senior adviser at CLEAPSS. "I don't know where they are getting their advice from but we don't believe there is a significant risk from egg boxes. Have you heard the one about handling toilet roll centres? Crazy - there is a much greater risk of kids going to the toilet and not washing their hands properly. Following that logic you should probably be stopping children from going to the toilet."
He says his organisation is constantly dealing with schools that are "choosing to believe the worst". Some schools do not allow mercury or chemical reactions to be conducted in school laboratories. Others falsely believe they are not allowed to dissect animal eyes or hearts in biology classes.
"It is just one of the myths and rumours people seem to latch on to. They overreact in terms of trying to be as conscious of health and safety as possible. It sounds like someone is imagining things when it comes to egg boxes - if the education authority really has such a policy then it will be written down somewhere and they would be able to produce the advice."
In other words, Karen Terry and the teachers of Wallands School were all following a policy that did not exist. How could this be? Tranter has a theory. "The county council is probably trying to hedge its bets. People overreact and try to make life as uncomplicated for themselves as possible. Everything is a lot simpler if you chose not to do something. They then blame it on somebody else by saying, 'Ah well, we are not allowed to do that because of health and safety.' It then spreads by word of mouth to the school down the road who think they are doing something wrong."
Triumphant, I call Terry and tell her the good news that the policy may not exist after all. She is not so sure and cannot understand where else the advice could have come from. She says she will try and find out, if I could give her another week - there is a bank holiday looming and she has meetings in London all week and it will be hard to get hold of her senior managers. An unsatisfactory stalemate has been reached and I decide it is time to give up trying to penetrate the inner machinations of East Sussex County Council.
But I make a final call to Brian Davies. I tell him the LEA has had a month to give me a straight answer and it has failed to do so, referring me, at various points, to the DfES, the HSE and CLEAPSS.
He is understanding. "Well, Karen has only been in the job for a year and the decision went back to the days of the salmonella scare so I can understand if she's having difficulty finding the original circular or directive."
He is, however, clearly delighted by the news that a world authority on microbiology thinks the risk from handling egg boxes is negligible and that the official advice from CLEAPPS is that they should not be banned.
Is it possible this was all caused by some terrible confusion and that the school never had any advice? "Absolutely not. We would never do something crazy like that unless we had firm instructions from the LEA. And we would continue to do that until we were told otherwise."
But Davies, as eager as any parent to let his charges enjoy the creative potential of egg boxes, says he will take up the matter with Karen next time they speak.
"We would really love to let the kids use these materials but we are totally reliant on the county council for our health and safety advice. We will have to wait to get their clearance."
*The provenance of this figure is a bit mysterious. Department of Health figures show that in 2003/04 8,617 people were seen in hospital for having some part of their body "caught, crushed, jammed or pinched between objects", of which 3,479 were aged between 0-14
Postscript: The health and safety officer of East Sussex County Council did eventually send a letter to the FT. She was unable to clarify whether the egg box and toilet roll ban had ever existed but acknowledged that they were advised by CLEAPPS in its Summer 2005 news letter that egg boxes and toilet rolls did not pose "a significant problem" or would expose children to "more bacteria than ordinary day-to-day living".
