Imagine for a moment that it's Christmas morning. Beneath the tree or at the foot of the bed you should find (if you're lucky) a small pile of presents.

Start opening them and don't be too surprised if you come across a solar-powered plastic frog that glows in the dark, a vibrating hairbrush or a sonic mole chaser.

Altogether now: "Ah, that's just what I've always wanted ... "

Whoever popped those goodies in your Christmas stocking has obviously been shopping where I've been browsing this week - in the pages of one of those strange little catalogues that fall out of glossy magazines around this time of year.

Here you will discover the sort of oddities you could never find in an ordinary shop. Things that are never put on shopping lists or requested from Santa because no one knows they exist.

Things such as the alarm clock disguised as a Bible, which wakes you with a rousing Hallelujah chorus. Or the toenail clippers with a built-in receptacle to catch all the clippings.

Yes, I know, just what you've always wanted.

For those who travel long distances but are often caught short, there's a portable urinal with a "feminine adaptor" (sorry, I do not propose to go into details) or, if you're expecting visitors from France this Christmas, why not impress them with a portable bidet? Or maybe not.

Then, for the proud housewife (whoever she may be), there's a set of printed covers to transform her upright vacuum cleaner into a smiling ladies maid. Very Gosford Park.

"It's a great conversation piece!" we're promised.

It certainly got The Mother and myself talking.

"You'd get a shock if you came into a room and saw that grinning at you," she said.

"I take it you don't want anything like that for Christmas then?" I said. "How about a flashing doorbell or a safe can instead?"

"What's a safe can?" she asked.

"Well," I said. "It looks like a can of beans but it's empty inside. You put all your money in it and then put it amongst all your other cans of beans. If thieves break in they'll never find your dosh."

"But we don't eat beans," said the Mother.

"What's that?" she asked peering over my shoulder at the catalogue.

That's a slug trap," I told her. "You fill it with beer, put it in the garden and the slugs and snails are such lushes they can't resist it. They fall in the beer and there's no escape."

"How very cruel," said The Mother.

"Those look strange," she said pointing to an item on the opposite page.

"They're called mop slippers," I said, quickly turning the page. "You slip them on and then as you walk round the house you're cleaning and shining the dirty floors as you go."

"I wonder who buys those sort of things?" said The Mother.

"I don't know," I said. "Obviously somebody does but it's beyond me why they would."

When she left the room, I reached for my Biro and my chequebook. Shoe size three, I wrote on the order form.

Guess who's going to have the cleanest floors in Brighton this Christmas?

And guess who's unwittingly going to be shining them?

"They're just what you've always wanted," I shall tell The Mother.