At last. And just what you’ve been waiting for. The official Wiki Man guide to the best gadgets and gizmos for giving this Christmas.
The Philips AirFryer, from £70-ish. Spectator readers may remember a craze for cooking things via a French method called sous-vide. Using this senseless technology, you could cook soggy food for days at low temperatures by warming it gently in a colostomy bag; handy if you fancied a couple of days off work with botulism, but frankly bugger all use for anything else. The AirFryer is the opposite of sous-vide: it isn’t French and is actually useful. It quickly makes food hot and crispy as God intended, not with fat but with superheated air. Everyone who buys one becomes an evangelist. Available from Amazon and some tax-compliant retailers.
St John Welsh Rarebit Mixture. 250g, £4.99, Ocado. The single best food innovation for lazy people since the Pot Noodle. Spread it on toast, pop under the grill (or in your new AirFryer) for a few minutes, then add Worcester Sauce to taste (i.e. loads). If you have had the original from the eponymous restaurant, this is as close as you’ll get outside EC1. Good for use with the…
Russell Hobbs or Magimix glass-sided toaster, £50-£175, various retailers. They put a man on the moon before they invented the glass-sided toaster. Go figure.
Anything from Selfridges.com. They pack your purchases in such perfect cardboard boxes, elegantly lined in yellow, and are so cavalier with tissue paper that, as a bloke, you could probably get away with not wrapping the contents at all. Best of all, for £15, you get free next-day delivery on all your orders for a year. This suits me as I no longer need to travel into London to buy their goods.
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