Barometer

Winner of the Week

PROFESSOR ROY Bakay of the Department of Neurology at Emory University, Atlanta, Georgia.

The Professor has invented a computer that can be operated by mind power, just like in Star Trek or Space 1999 or The Tomorrow People.

Tiny electrodes are placed inside the brain which allow the computer to detect brain signals. A disabled patient uses the device to move a computer cursor and communicate. Thus is born "the wearable PC". Man and machine in perfect harmony.

Loser of the Week

MAGGIE'S HANDBAGS. They slayed Scargill, Galtieri and the entire Eastern Bloc. But all this makes no odds to Churchill College, Cambridge, the supposed custodian of the Thatcher archive. These days, it seems, nobody wants an old bag. Funny old world, isn't it?

Toy of the Week

FANCY A Furby? pounds 29.99 RRP. It sings, snores and burps. It speaks a dialect derived from Thai and Hebrew. Furby responds to attention. If it's scared, its eyes open and its ears prick up: when it's happy it dances.

Furby also responds to modern marketing techniques. Not in the shops yet, but Zoe Ball, Chris Evans and Richard and Judy have already got the Furbies (no, it's not just a nasty rumour).

As the Furbies' promotions manager says: "The general strategy is to get samples in the hands of celebrities, so they give them free air time, basically." Although the 350,000 that will arrive for Christmas sounds a lot, they probably won't satisfy demand. Tracey Island all over again. Kah toh-loo may-tay, as they say in Furbyland.

Tips of the Week

BIZARRE TIPS for making an ideal baby:

1. Posh girls have smarter babies.

2. Remove

mothballs from the love-making en-vironment. 3. Don't use deodorant. 4. Don't listen to rock music. So don't have it off with a scrubber drenched in Right Guard in a wardrobe listening to Black Sabbath if you want to get your kid into Oxford.

Image of the Week

THIS IMPRESSION of Prince Harry's dodgy hairdo in The Mirror is the subject of a royal plea to the Press Complaints Com-mission. The nearest thing to a suedehead that the House of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha has produced since the original nutty boy, George III.