The comedian on TV made me laugh the other night, singing about his “very mild superpowers”.

When he cycled with headphones on, he could usually tell where he would be at the end of the tune.

When he went into foreign kitchens, he could sense where the plates and crockery were. He could get broken pens to work.

The flipside was that with every mild superpower came a mild weakness, such as an aversion to cheese wrapped in plastic and not being able to tell when people were being sarcastic.

I have many weaknesses, some of them not so mild. One that plagues me is that I am frequently struck with clever ideas only after hearing them from somebody else.

The subject of “very mild superpowers’’ as a premise for an entertaining piece of writing, being the most recent example.

In the same vein, I have identified potentially clever ideas on my own and then sat back and done nothing about them, only to see total strangers develop them into money-generating realities.

The mobile coffee-making machine comes to mind. Once upon a time, I had an idea to put an espresso machine into a van and travel to wherever people wanted good coffee but couldn’t easily get it. I even thought of a name. Go Go Beans.

Unfortunately, I did not possess the superpower of being able to bring an idea to fruition simply by thinking about it, not doing any work and hoping it would happen by magic.

What I noticed was that somebody in a parallel universe not only had the same idea, but probably had it many years before me, and then had the power and dedication to make it happen. Now I see mobile coffee vans everywhere.

I’ve even heard people say: “Look, a mobile coffee van. What a great idea.”

Ideas “shmears”. They’re like paté knives with Santa Clause handles ... everybody’s got one.

The one I am having right now is about pinching David O’Doherty’s – the funny bloke on the telly I was talking about earlier – and running with it.

Now I don’t pretend to be anywhere near as mildly superpowerful as he, but occasionally I have demonstrated unremarkable tendencies of my own, both the strong and the weak.

For example, I can cook an adequate corned beef.

When I open a dictionary at any random page, I can always find a word which makes me laugh. I’ll do it now. Porcupine. They have stout, erectile spines. See what I’m talking about?

If there is a prickle in a yard, I will stand on it.

I can find the tow bar of most mid-range Australian sedans and station wagons with my shin.

When I walk into a room and forget why I am supposed to be there, I can usually find something to do immediately, which makes the experience both seamless and worthwhile.

For example, I might grab a banana if one is available.

I have weighed 70kg since I was in Grade 11.

Although I have never eaten one, I think I know what ants would taste like. Peppery and a bit like old cheese.

Occasionally, I have neat writing days where everything I write by hand is inexplicably neater than usual.

I simply can’t form a mental picture of what the internet is. If you want to know where a webpage goes when you’re not looking at it, I can’t help you.

Whenever I buy a new calendar, I immediately turn to my birth month, June, where I will find the crappiest picture.

I’m not overly scared of spiders, but I don’t like bird’s feet or goat’s eyes.

I find that when I try to save an upside-down Christmas beetle and it wraps its spiky little legs around my finger, the experience is way more frightening than it ought to be.

Once I made two-minute noodles in three minutes 43 seconds, but that’s the best I’ve ever done.

Whenever they handed out social studies projects at primary school I always got the obscure topic about which no books existed, such as Lapland. Discuss.

When I am using a new saw, I can detect the exact moment to within several sawing motions of when it is officially blunter than the old one it replaced in the shed.

Sometimes I simply can’t summon the ability to create clever endings to newspaper columns, so I just finish them like this and go and make a cup of tea. A mild one.