"Executive gadgets used to promise to boost productivity. Now, writes David Williamson, the market has morphed into a multi-million-pound grown-up toy industry. Here is a selection of just some of the thousands of items designed to blur the lines between the boardroom and the playroom

USB Christmas Tree, main picture

AT A young age the idea of being a long-distance business traveller sounds quite romantic - all the fun of being in the circus without the mess of the elephants.

However, shortly after completing a graduate trainee scheme, a horror can seep through the sinews of even the most ambitious professional when he realises that at least a third of his life will be spent sleeping in a suit on an aeroplane.

The dread escalates into concrete-panelled panic when the prospect emerges of spending Christmas in the departures lounge of a Soviet-era airport in a terrain where champagne is frowned upon and Only Fools and Horses is dubbed.

It is gadgets such as this Christmas tree, which merrily glows when plugged into the USB socket of a laptop, that can stop a person from transforming such a situation of personal angst into an international situation requiring the intervention of a SWAT team.

Christmas carols can be downloaded from the internet all year round, so it is possible to prepare now for a December crisis. The best preparation, of course, is to get a government grant to launch your own business - then you can send your cousin Tim to Luton.

pounds 9.95


Remote Control Rat

THE open-plan office is sometimes a terrain in which ideas skip from person to person like athletic lice during a primary school papier mache session.

More often that tragically not, however, you spend your days hearing phones ring in an unpleasant parody of the way your ancestors listened to uninterrupted birdsong.

True, cave-dwellers were wiped out by plagues and carnivorous beasts, and all we have to worry about is strychnine in the coffee machine, but the relentless noise of the contemporary office is only slightly less intolerable than advanced forms of water torture.

If you want to empty your office of other people in a maximum of five minutes you could do a Des O'Connor impersonation, but that might result in a war crimes prosecution. A gentler option is to send this remote-control rat scurrying between computers.

This will result in people running like zippier versions of Paula Radcliffe, and also create the opportunity for you to gain a reputation for pre-postmodern heroism.

While they stand outside hugging each other and checking for signs of the bubonic plague, lean out of the window clutching your gadget and cry, 'Fellow capitalists, rejoice! I have subdued the vermin!'

This display of such valued bravado will inevitably result in a seat on the board and an office of your own where you can play thrash metal CDs without attracting critical glances.

pounds 19.95


Executive Shooting Gallery

THE global economy is not that different from a fairground where a moustached fellow with a parrot and a lot of tattoos tricks incredulous kids out of their pocket money in exchange for promises of wild excitement.

Nobody minds that a ride on the ghost train does not feature real ghouls and, similarly, the fact that driving a high performance sports car rarely results in Shania Twain thumbing a ride cannot be blamed for any downturn in the auto industry.

Rather than deny the essential triviality at the heart of the consumer society, celebrate it by setting up this miniature shooting gallery in the marketing department. Hitting monthly targets will never have seemed so much fun.

pounds 24.99


Voice Stress Analyser

THERE are many things that used to be thought bad but are no longer frowned upon.

For example, no-one is going to have you put in stocks for daring to ask a man carrying a badger where he keeps his mackerel on a Thursday.

However, telling fibs and falsehoods is still one of the few activities that is considered a completely negative human form of behaviour. Politicians can win elections if they display evidence of having had dodgy haircuts or experimented with hallucinogenic varieties of pasta, but evidence of telling a lie results in humiliation at the ballot box.

Of course, when giving presentations it can sometimes be difficult to stick to the cold and hard highway of truth, simply because we carry such a plethora of facts in our heads.

Did we sell a million units of iguana-flavoured champagne or just four?

This delightful gadget will let you know when you or someone in your vicinity is spouting untruths.

It can detect the crack in the human voice which happens when accuracy is abandoned. Take it to work and let a new era of corporate honesty begin!




Thinking Putty

THIS product is perhaps in a grey region of the Trade Descriptions Act. It does not 'think' as such, and is not the longed-for additional brain which consumers have been demanding with increasing fervour in recent months.

However, it is a malleable material which is supremely enjoyable to play with when locked in the bowels of a stressful Tuesday.

The makers do not provide evidence that this putty was in use when Einstein coined the theory of relativity or when Billie Piper was cast in Doctor Who, but we can be pretty sure it was not present at the creation of Railtrack or the Cones Hotline.


Night Owl Keyboard

If you have been promoted to be team leader of an office project, congratulations! This recognition of your leadership skills may be proof that your suspicion you are a direct descendent of Roman Emperor Nero is not a sign of lunacy but an indication of fact.

Motivating your corps of employees into a state of fevered excitement about the Welsh llama-breeding business is a stiff challenge, but not an impossible one.

The apparent sluggard at the corner desk who is currently sprawled across his computer like a slumbering otter may not look like he is capable of incisive initiative-taking but he comes alive in nightclubs where he is known as the Casanova of Cefn-y-Garth.

The best way of putting his formidable social energy to work in the office is not to empty a fire extinguisher in his direction but to make your office seem more like a nightclub.

In low-light conditions this keyboard will brightly glow. If you play some Wham! and dance behind him, a rush of adrenalin will fuel his creative energies and soon he will have devised a thousand ways to sell a llama in Newport or Nicaragua.



For regular updates on the latest in consumer gadgetry, read David Williamson's Big Boys' Toys every Tuesday in the WM supplement"