I don't know how I ever managed without it!

AS CHRISTMAS comes inexorably upon us, like a French fox with rabies tiptoeing through the Channel Tunnel towards the English coastline, it is time yet again to open up the Independent Christmas Bazaar and see what wonderful gift ideas we have for you this year! Don't forget that all these presents are sold with the World Trade Organisation stamp of approval, which means that they have been made dirt cheap in the Third World and sold at horrendous expensive prices to you.

A Golf Ball Jammer Thanks to the success of the electronic golf ball, which emits a plaintive bleep if it is not found within five minutes of being hit into the rough, many a wayward golfer is now enjoying his game again and not suffering from lost balls. However, this is scarcely fair on his hapless opponent, who is probably halfway down the fairway, so we have devised a small device which allows you, the careful golfer, to jam and neutralise the signal given out by any electronic golf ball! Enjoy your opponent's baffled face! And go round afterwards and collect his ball for yourself, just by switching off the jamming!

Third World Wind-Up Nuclear Power Station Modern clockwork technology is taking giant strides every year. After the humble beginnings of the wind-up radio and wind-up torch, and, last year, the wind-up automobile, we have now reached the ultimate - the wind-up nuclear power station! Suitable either for the man who has everything or the nation that has nothing.

Combination Fruit and Newspaper Disposer The urban flat-dweller has no cause or opportunity to create a compost heap, so is normally forced to throw his or her apple peel and orange skins away wastefully. Similarly, they have no way of disposing of their newspapers save via the paper bank. Now at last this handy little machine not only turns your old paper into inflammable briquettes, but takes your fruit peelings as well, to give the briquettes a delicious scent as they give off a powerful heat in your wood-burning stove! It's a present that you can use to make other lovely presents with...

Inflatable Yellow AA Van The one thing a woman driver fears more than anything else is breaking down on the motorway when driving alone, and thus being prey to any predatory male driver who might pass. Until now, the best thing a stranded female driver could do while awaiting help was put a pair of trousers under the car and stick a pair of shoes on the end, as if a man were lying under car mending it. No more need for that with this full-size, totally convincing inflatable AA van! Just inflate and park behind stranded car until the real AA or RAC man comes!

Guinness Book of Pub Arguments As you probably know, the most popular pub game in Britain is called "pub argument". Any number of players can take part, and the idea is that roughly half of them support a chosen idea as being good common sense and the others attack it as arrant nonsense. Any new player must take the part of the side which is losing. This little book gives all the rules (eg "Never disagree with a man who is buying you a round"), all the best subjects from fox-hunting and the Euro to the English cricket team and the iniquity of Rupert Murdoch, as well as 20 good arguments to be used on either side in any argument. (There are some unusual pro-Jeffrey Archer arguments, by the way. )

Electronic Bookmark This state-of-the-art bookmark is a tape recorder so thin it can mark your place in a book, but so versatile that it can record your thoughts the last time you closed the book. You know how, when you finish a stint of reading, you often want to record what you think of the book ("Basically rubbish, but I'll give it another go...") or the characters ("This cousin who has just turned up in Chapter Seven seems a suspicious sort to me - I wouldn't be surprised if he weren't the murderer...") or even the place where you're reading ("MUST get a hot water bottle tonight...")? Well, now you can!

Send for full list of this and other Christmas Bazaar items.