Britain's Accidental Inventor.(Brian Bennett, former truck driver and inventor of a medicinal cream )(Interview)

Byline: Clint Witchalls

Brian Bennett doesn't make a very convincing media superstar. It's the end of the day, and Bennett is sitting in a London bar puffing on a cigarette, looking tired and bewildered. "My head's in a spin," he says. "I've been on Central News. I've been on Sky News. I've had eight newspapers and photographers around, and I've done 12 live radio chats. It's just gone crazy." Bennett had come down by train from his home in Nuneaton, in the British Midlands, at the invitation of ITV. England's biggest commercial television channel wanted to know how he--a retired truckdriver--had invented a cream that protects against Staphylococcus aureus , the deadly antibiotic-resistant bacteria that infects 100,000 people a year.

If that were all he had done, Bennett would still be living the quiet life of a pensioner. Hospitals, where most people are infected with staph, already have lotions that can kill the bug. The problem is, the instant that nurses or doctors finish washing their hands, they're vulnerable to getting infected again. Bennett's cream keeps the hands from being reinfected--for hours .

How did he do come up with the magic formula? In 2001, his wife, Heather, a post-office clerk, came down with dermatitis. Doctors couldn't cure it. Brian, who had flunked biology at school, went to work in his garage. He bought a barrel of barrier cream, which protects the skin from chemicals, and, based on what he could cull from library books and guesswork, began adding ingredients: aloe vera, evening-primrose oil, ...