Diary – 20 October 2007

Christmas is coming. In fact, clock the mince pies on sale in M&S or the ruddy selection boxes in just about every store except Millets, and you could be forgiven for thinking it’s here already. Last week saw the annual headache that is the publication of the top ten list of ‘must-have’ Christmas toys, all likely to be requested by those short people that live in your house and all guaranteed to be out of stock by 30 October because of a failure by manufacturers to pre-empt demand. Apparently, this year’s Tracey Island is an equally hard-to-come-by Igglepiggle, a cuddly toy described as ‘energetic but vulnerable’. I know how it feels. Last year, I thought I’d sussed it, locking myself away for the afternoon with just a laptop and a pile of those gift mags you throw in the bin the other 364 days of the year. Boy was I smug. No queue scrums for me, just the relatively effortless task of answering my door to a stream of polite and punctual couriers bearing gifts. The reality, of course, was that one internet site had vanished by the time I chased my errant order, while, after much shrieking on my part to a call centre in India, another finally delivered a box that was supposed to contain a pink Barbie castle but, once the courier had sped off, opened to reveal a doggedly dark-brown pirate ship. So this year, ho hum, it’s elbows sharpened and back out to the mêlée of the high street. 

Spurred on by the above Christmas shopping experience, I decided to set up a consumer website where members of the public review manufacturers, products and services. As a hardened Luddite, this is akin to Roy Keane casually mentioning he’s just designed a ladies handbag range. But www.youthejury.com