Look in the loft for a perfect retro gift

Aug 8 2008

I WAS sitting in front of the television last weekend enjoying a light shandy when I must have dozed off.

Imagine my shock when I woke up to find the telly had switched onto the shopping channel (okay, I was watching it before I fell asleep – there was a really interesting hi-fi on, honest) and everything had gone Christmas!

The screen was filled with tinsel, trees and singing snowmen. My first thought was that something had found its way into my drink and I’d been asleep five months. But no, it turned out that a few TV shopping channels had decided that we should start preparing for the festive season in July.

What’s more worrying though is that it’s not the first I’ve heard about Christmas this year. The list of must-have toys for 2008 had been published a month beforehand. Quite how manufacturers know what is going to be a big seller so far in advance is beyond me. Maybe they just know how much they’re going to plough into marketing a product hoping it will sell on the hype.

At this time of year we’re all still trying to pay for summer, with many no doubt still paying for last Christmas. Energy price-hikes too mean we’ll be budgeting a lot more for winter and not really wanting to think about how many presents we need to buy.

But there may be an answer. From the list of must-haves, one of the predicted big sellers is to be the return of the Rubik’s Cube.

Now, here’s my money-saving tip to all children of the 80s – check the loft. I bet you’ll have one of the original Rubik’s Cubes up there. Dig it out, dust it down and there you have the perfect retro gift for Christmas.

And if it’s still all muddled up (I bet that’s why it got chucked in the loft in the first place), solve it the easy way – by peeling off the coloured squares – before passing it on!

Keep listening to the breakfast show this week to win your way into the Hydro Connect music festival at Inverary, Loch Fyne – featuring Franz Ferdinand, Paolo Nutini, Duffy and many more. I’ll talk to you Monday to Friday from 6am.