Getting a Collection item creation date

Hi,

I have a client who would like to see the creation date / time of items in a Collection. I could add a date field to the Collection item edit template but we don't want this to be editable by all site editors. Is there a way to achieve this without digging around in the database?

Any suggestions are much appreciated!

Thanks ellimondo (and montlewis ) that's interesting to see. I can get a timestamp with that, but it will update on every save of the colletion item, whereas I'm looking for a timestamp of the initial item creation (which won't change on subsequent item saves).

If I print_r($Item) within the timestamp.class.php I can see an itemCreated string that is exactly what I need but I'm not sure how to get at it...