How have you lived without an electric washing up brush?

No more vainly rubbing at coffee-stained mugs and grease-encrusted frying pans...

AS CHRISTMAS comes slipping ever nearer, like a small gang of bank robbers in the undergrowth, I'd like to offer help with your Christmas gift-buying, and that means it's time for another visit to the Independent Christmas Bazaar!

Yes, here is another selection of mouth-watering gift ideas, all ingenious, all made cheaply in the Third World and all sold at advanced capitalist prices. If you don't see something to solve a present problem here, we shall feel very let down by you.

Encyclopaedia of Film Endings

All too often we have to leave a TV film before the end, and never find out what happened. Or we time a VHS tape to record a film, and the TV company changes the start of the film so the tape runs out before the end. Or maybe we do see the end of the film but can't understand what happened! Now, all your troubles are over, with an encyclopaedia that tells you the endings of over 5,000 popular late night films - and explains them! Nothing else, just the endings! You need never wonder again if he and she do get it together in the end, or if she finally shoots him as he so richly deserves! Price pounds 19.99, or the de luxe edition for pounds 39.99 which lists all the original endings planned for films, which the directors were forced to discard.

Home Sparkling Wine Maker

A great new breakthrough in home wine-making - a machine which converts an ordinary dry white wine into a classy new sparkling white. You just take home a bottle of boring old white plonk, stick it in the Home Sparkling Wine Maker, and hey presto! Fifteen minutes later it's a wonderful champagne- type bottle of bubbly. (NB It is expressly forbidden by law to put the name Champagne on anything, but we think you can still get away with "champagne- type".) pounds 43.50, including 100 labels.

Reading Spectacles Locator

One of the great mysteries of life, if you wear specs, is the way that reading glasses cases never go missing and reading glasses always do. Now at last these two facts have been combined to produce a device which will always locate your specs! When you lose your glasses, go straight to your case, because inside your spectacle case you have now put a small switch. When you press this switch it activates a bleeper on your glasses, which you will then hear calling to you like a little lost lamb. (NB This noise can be turned to any volume, but we advise you to keep it soft, as very often the missing glasses are hanging round your neck, and it is somewhat self-defeating to be deafened by your own glasses.) pounds 75.75.

Electric Washing Up Brush

At last a household device which combines new technology with the old- fashioned virtues of washing up. No more vainly rubbing at coffee-stained mugs and grease- encrusted frying pans - now this high-speed revolving washing up brush removes all muck in a moment! Battery or mains powered. Caution: should not be used on antique china, as tends to remove pictorial patterns. pounds 35.90.

Mobile Phone Background Noise Creator

When you ring home on your mobile and say to your partner, "I'm on the train home," and there is no train noise behind you, who is really going to believe you? When you ring home to say you're working late, and she can hear pub chat and noise of glasses tinkling in the background, what chance have you got?

Now at last those problems are over with the new Mobile Phone Background Noise Creator! Simply install this in your mobile, and find yourself with a choice of 25 background sound scenarios which you want the person at the other end to believe in, including Church Service, Airport Terminal, Traffic Jam, Police Arrest, Strip Search, Supermarket Check-out, House of Commons Debate, etc, etc. pounds 47.99, all included.

Scrabble Pyjamas

Following the success of our last year's gift for insomniacs, the Bumper Crossword Pyjamas, we now bring you the ultimate sexy cerebral sleepless gift - Scrabble Pyjamas! The board layout is already in the design of the nightwear and the letter tiles - all fitted with Velcro - come separately, so that you can fit each one on to the pyjamas individually. It's a great way for two or more people to get to know each other intellectually and physically at the same time ! pounds 32 a pair - or pounds 48 for see-through nightie version!

More great Christmas ideas in this space soon!