Poor reception for 'greatest' gadgets

Stephen Fry: Gadget Man C4

STEPHEN Fry's a man who enjoys gadgets. "I still have a desperate need to have the latest phone, alarm clock, egg timer," he says.

From the look of him here, I'd say a beard trimmer is the number one priority.

Speaking as someone who has about as much affection for gadgets as David Cameron does Nadine Dorries, I find Fry's attitude baffling.

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"Gadgets," he claims, "entertain us, educate us, connect us."

Yes, there's nothing better than spending half of Christmas Day trying to get a new games console to work.

"However you look at them," he continued, "gadgets make the world a much better and, dare I say, happier place." Really? I don't recall seeing puce-faced people stood on chairs with their arm in the air cursing the lack of phone reception in 1980.

"As soon as gadgets are launched," Fry states, "I have to have them." Look out for him queuing in a sleeping bag outside your local Argos.

Gadget Man is a pointless half hour in which we're invited to watch Fry self-indulgently drool over the reject bucket from Tomorrow's World. Introducing the 'smarter cart', a robotic shopping trolley, he claimed "the faff of how to choose your food and how to prepare it is one of the curses of the 21st century".

A third of the world's population would love to be in a position to find out.

The 'smarter cart' follows your body shape round the supermarket. They tried it on Peter Crouch but it kept going to the mops section.

Its great plus point, apparently, is that you don't have to push it – it's perfectly capable of clipping old ladies' ankles by itself.

"Because it knows the layout of the shop," wittered Fry, "it can also guide you, like a supermarket sat-nav."

Well thank goodness for that – those massive signs they hang from the ceiling are so hard to follow.

Fry loaded his shopping into an electric car with Jonathan Ross, marvelling at the silence, seemingly unaware that most of us enjoy engine noise to drown out the kids.

He took the nosh off for a dinner with Carol Vorderman, Derren Brown, and Jo Brand – an app to make Vorderman vanish from your TV will be available by Christmas. Brown had a go of the world's biggest bottle opener – costing £150,000. Ask for one at Bargain Booze.

Fry's final gimmick was a 360 degree projector which allows people to pretend they're in a foreign country or even space.

I've changed my mind about gadgets – how I wish I'd had one when this was on.