Really useful adverts on the Tube

Mundane journeys to work would be so much more bearable if someone advertised something actually interesting and useful on those mini-hoardings near the ceilings in the carriages of London Underground trains.

For instance, instead of gooey patent remedies in pouches for office boys with colds and flu, clinics for sad bastards fretting about their receding hairlines and websites where you can call Bhutan for 1p a minute, you could have Lift-o-Plunge, a sure-fire way to be rid of annoying co-workers or bosses, boorish bus drunks and ignorant imbeciles who push in at the queue for the tea machine or the hole in the wall.

With Lift-o-Plunge, you simply press a button on a mobile telephone-sized device and the object of your ire is transported by invisible hands to the nearest lift shaft and thrown to the bottom. For the recipient of a Lift-o-Plunge plunge, no amount of grabbing hold of lampposts, taxi panic handles, desks or policeman's ankles will do a bit of good, and their journey to the basement will be accompanied by a few bars of the Hallelujah Chorus audible to within 100 metres of the plunge site. You could have other tunes, too.

Another useful product can be found on adverts for seenitdoneitreaditknowitbackwards. This provides, by means of a wireless internet connection between a chip implanted in the back of the skull and a computer at the British Library, the antidote to clever dicks who claim to know everything and everyone and think they are interesting and gifted conversationalists. All you have to do is bring the discussion around to Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle or some similarly mind-blowing topic and let your opponent begin to drown in the deep water of quantum mechanics while you intone on the mysteries of the momentum of electrons. It also works for unravelling Sanskrit, translations of Homer and coming up with the names of the Rochdale Hornets backs of 1960.

For travellers wanting a change of scene, there is Cottage In A Box. This is really clever and comes in several different flavours, including Scotland, Ireland, East Anglia and the Cotswolds. What you do is stand in a field, or a car park, or your garden, pour a pint of water into the sachet that comes inside the box, give it a shake and tip the mixture on to the ground. In 10 seconds it takes on the form of a lovely little stone cottage, fully furnished and with bread baking in the kitchen. There are roses around the door and birds twittering in the sunshine-dappled garden. For a few quid extra, you can have one with a pub next door and all the beer you can drink. The cottages last for a fortnight but the developers are working on a one that recreates the South of France for a month at a time and also a ski chalet in northern Norway.

A couple of late entrants: Washing-up-for-life-in-Advance where, for a one-off fee, all your washing up is done. For ever. And a day. Also, Social Niceties-Away, an interesting concept whereby investors get to wear a deeley bopper-type device which measures and assays mutual sexual interest from fellow commuters and, providing the correct level is reached, lights up a sign on your T-shirt saying "How About It?". But what happens if the interest is from several members of both sexes? Well, you never your luck in a big city.