I bought oven gauntlets (for use in the aga) for my wife for her birthday. For some reason it didn't go down particularly well, although she does admit they are much better than tea towels at retrieving dishes from the depths of the roasting oven.

Ian Wright, Isle of Man,

I love my electric can opener. Given to me by an extremely eccentric girl in Brisbane, I would be bereft at it not working. And I have another girl friend who has a small device I much covet. Your maligned egg scissors. I search in vain for one. Not being a spoon basher of boiled egg tops, I find my aim maladjusted at best with a knife as I try to decapitate a boiled egg. Breakfast at her place is a pleasure as the little slicer first pricks the boiled egg and then neatly slices off the perfect sized top. Such a simple device and yet so sublime.

Michael, Auckland, NZ

Ms Moran

I can't help but have noticed over the last few months, but you are a very good looking woman.

Cheerio.

Chris Phipps, Worthing,

Yes, all very witty, but folded tea towels aren't thick enough and if damp produce penetrating steam to really burn the fingers!
I also use my bread maker almost every day to produce bread made from yeast, flour, water, butter and salt without any additives (see T2 earlier this week) whilst still having time to sleep and get to work.
One day when my joints give up I might even buy an electric can opener.

Marc Thomas, Oxford,

My favourite is the "cake tester". It's actually just a knitting needle. Fantastic.

D, London, UK

So what is useful?

Mike Jackson, Buderim, Qld Australia

Wise words in every regard, however dissing the oven glove is flirting with insanity! As someone who has worked in a bakery I cannot convey in words the mounting weeping frustration of constantly searching for those feckers in the face of rapidly charring food...for anyone who wants to know, it takes approximately 3 seconds for searing heat to travel through two damp balled up tea towels and cause mild to permanent skin damage (if only we'd thought to use a special drawer)...a pair of grimy, blackened, suspiciously soiled oven gloves should have pride of place in every right thinking individual's home!

Evelyn, Dublin, Ireland

Electric can-openers are worse than worthless. Electric knives, on the other hand, are hilarious retro entertainment. We have one we inherited from an old roommate. We brought it out once to slice a roast, and all our guests were fighting about who would get to use it. It's a party in a box, I swear.

Celina, Washington, DC, USA

"Electric bread-maker? USE THE OVEN!"

Thank you for that much-needed wake up call. I shall from now on be rising every morning at 4 am to knead, prove and bake my daily bread the way the Lord intended.

MickJ, London,

Alex from Milton Keynes - your oven's too hot! Turn it down man.

Dom , Manchester,

I think you are being a bit unfair to Lakeland Caitlin, perhaps you did not realise that they are the company who pioneered the gadget for removing the leafy part on the end of a strawberry. Who can live without this?

chris walter, maidstone, england

Dear Ms. Moran,

I would like a decent excuse to send you money directly. Please write a book.

Peter N., Reston, VA

Ever seen the electric knife sharperner sharpener? Yes, that wasn't a typo. One can buy a sharperner to sharpern ones sharperner.

Sarah, London,

I am an oven glove man myself. They have the serious advantage that they are about 50 times thicker than even a doubled teatowel, and stop my obviously delicate fingers from being seared to shreds. I haved tried both on numerous occasions - this is not an unsupported hypothesis.

David Giles, Düsseldorf, Germany

1. Which idiot invented cans in the first place?
2. Why would you want to eat things from cans?
3. Who put the poisons in the water in the first place?
4. Bread-Makers are for the lazy or disabled.
5. Count up the cost of all the pointless kitchen items you have.
6. Consider life without them.
7. Buying pointless gadgets is causing pollution.
8. They're going to break one day (probably soon).
9. When you throw them away they'll cause more pollution.
10. Eggs are awesome.

Andrew Corr, Burton On Trent, England

you assume everybody has a conventional oven..rice cookers and slow cookers etc are great for people who live in rooms and have no hob either. I agree that many smaller gadgets are unnecessary.

yvonne, Ely,

Oven gloves would be fine if my thumbs were in the middle of my hands!

John Faris, Peekskill, New York

tap water is full of poisons, use your Brita filter instead

Ralph Tedesco, London, UK

My favourite item to laugh at in the Lakeland Catalogue is the free standing bean slicer - a large unweildy contraption somehow superior to a knife that implies one will already have a wall-fixed bean slicer but will have lately been feeling whistful about the possibility of slicing beans in a variety of locations.

Mary , London, UK

Nooooo..! An electric can opener can't possibly be the worst kitchen gadget; I'm sure to arthritic, penniless pensioners it is viewed as the greatest invention ever to be bestowed upon this earth.

And bread makers are awesome. Okay, so it's customary for the machine to sit on top of a cupboard, neglected and dusty for a couple of years but after that initial period, it's actually pretty practical. You just bung in the ingredients and it does all the work for you. It kneads the dough BY ITSELF! Amazing! And rather fun to watch too( you can even dance along with it if you so please..). Also, there's no need to worry about when the bread will be ready as it has it's own timer, and, most importantly, you can leave the house while it's still on without the risk of your house burning down.

Olivia, London,

I'll happily join you in condemning most kitchen gadgets to the gadget drawer (a drawer which requires an oven glove to negotiate - or possibly even a gauntlet) but leave me my egg piercer. It's the only thing I've found that allows me to eat my morning's boiled egg from inside the shell rather than outside the shell.

Yes, I should probably remember to take the egg out of the fridge the night before or cook it in something arcane to avoid cracks, but for those of us who barely function until after breakfast an egg piercer is a life (or at least blouse) saver.

Anne, London,

My flatmate had the same opinion of oven gloves. When getting food out of the oven she got burnt on the wrist twice. She thought it was funny until some bloke on the tube made a comment about her being a bunny boiler who had tried to slash her wrists. Several weeks of long sleeves in summer ensured the permanent use of oven gloves.

Paul, London, UK

So, Caitlin, do all your tea towels get stained with the gravy and grease that gets on to anything you handle hot food with? Two ruined towels every time you lift a casserole? (You have to use one on each side) And if more than one person is helping in the kitchen, dirty tea towels left lying everywhere? When my children were children, in order to have hot dishes all carried to the table at the same time, I bought enough oven gloves for everybody. Also, I agree with Alex of Milton Keynes that even some gloves let the heat through, and folded tea towels are hopelessly thin.

Madeline Macdonald, Knebworth, UK

You know what is really needed is an electric unclogger for smoothie maker taps ..... anyone got the number for the patent office?

Laurence, Clifton,

Yes,yes,yes,yes,yes,no Caitlin!
As the Indiana Jones around this house, responsible for all cooking, but also an unhealthy love of tinkering with my vintage and classic cars, I find little use for most gadgets. But the little grey men in the Health and Safety Commission would inhale their 300 pageGuidelines in a gargantuan gulp of dismay at your suggestion that folded tea-towels should be used to remove hot dishes from the oven! They may look very silly and become easily contaminated, but oven gloves are a must for this adventure -free chef if he wants to survive to cook another day!

Rodney Knight, Barton Mills, Suffolk

Caitlin ... You are always good copy, and this is another. I leap for joy when I see your byline at the top of the page!

Steve, horsham, UK/West Sussex

My most hated electrical item is a mini beignet maker. Totally and utterly useless, I tried it out once and nearly hurled it through the glass doors onto the garden. It's now in the garage awaiting its fate. Funnily enough, no one wanted to buy it when I took it to the local flea market...

Sarah Hague, Montpellier, France

You can "fold" them.

Jack Thursby, Sheffield, UK

My electric can opener works just fine, and is a lot quicker than doing it by hand. An oven is no substitute for an electric bread-maker, since the latter takes care of the rising and kneading as well as the cooking. A knife will not slice eggs as efficiently as a wired egg-slicer. And the burns on my mother's wrists are an eloquent testimony to life without oven-gloves (I even bought her a pair, which she refuses to use).

Alys, Colchester, U.K.

So the electric can opener is the worst gadget, is it? Just wait until you get tendonitis and want to open a can. I sometimes have difficulty in opening the front door with a key, perhaps they can invent something for that.

Birgitta Karlsen, Bolton, England

Some of the items you mentioned may be impractical or over-engineered. Yet, some of the items may still have their place, for example items to make life easier for people who lack the manual dexterity to perform what we would consider menial tasks in the kitchen. e.g. The elderly or disabled.

Fony Vaio, London, UK

We use our wooden toast tongs every day and would not be without them

Johnny Norfolk, Mileham Norfolk, England

I love my electric can opener, so there!

samiam, london, uk

I also feel mild disgust at the idea of an oven glove, but must accept that they are a substantial improvement upon the tea towel as a hot-item-from-oven rescuing device.

This is for the reasons already mentioned here, and another, namely that with certain dishes the uppermost flapping bit of the towel is at risk of flopping over and dipping into your lasagne/shepherd's pie or what have you, contaminating both it and the towel.

Simon, Sofia,

Caitlin,

If you really want to replace your "boiled egg scissors" try here:

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=170135680625

I also saw similar items in the Croydon Allders earlier today.

Some items like baguette boards (a chopping board so narrow that it won't collect the crumbs from cutting a baguette that does even the slightest justice to the word crusty) are abominations to all possible utility.
Remember that some of the implements are actually suited to the infirm.
Though not perhaps the Smoothie maker.

Dan Allen, Crawley, UK

Thanks for the info. A pillow I can plug my ipod into is just what I have been looking for.

Quentin, Reading, UK

You forgot to mention the kitchen abhominations of banana hammocks and toast-tongs! Its the fall of Western Civilisation!!!

Katie, Ottumwa, USA, Iowa

Oven gloves? I found the best ones at Williams Sonoma. They're sort of a spongey material (think wet suits) with rubber-like material on both sides. They guard well and are very flexible. As far as the most useless item? Hmm, not sure. I actually use most of my gadgets, but I don't have, nor do I want, an electric can opener or an electric pop corn popper.

Babs, Greenwich, CT

Oven gloves are absolutely ridiculous! I wholeheartedly agree.

Alicia, Richmond, VA, USA

Wouldn´t be without my oven gloves - they hang on a hook ever at the ready. Numerous burns taught me the value of these gloves.

Sandwichmakers are my pet hate. The result tastes good but the work involved in keeping them clean has banned them from my kitchen. In fact, my kitchen is virtually gadget-free. My criterion is: if it makes work for me, chuck it!

Brooks, Munich, Gerfmany

Can you imagine anything worse than being shacked up in the Qualcomm Stadium with 5zillion Californians?! Free gifts or no, they are such a cheery, buoyant, smiling (irritatingly) helpful bunch out there I'd be beating the doors down in the hopes of escaping to fling myself into the furnace that was my home......
PS - oven-gloves are great. I think it's a test of one's butchness in the kitchen to see how many years they can last before you finally succumb to screaming 3rd degree burns and dinner all over the kitchen floor....

Nick Parker, Hawkhurst, Kent

I swear by my oven gloves! I would swear at tea towels, as, once wet they have a habit of transmitting heat very quickly and burning. Long live oven gloves!

Kathy, Askam in Furness, UK

Oven gloves can also cover well up the arm, so when absent-mindedly reaching into the oven you don't burn the top of your arm as I so often do unless wearing oven gloves. It's not very clever of me, but I do still have the burns from pre-gloves time to remind me to use them!

Alice, Manchester, UK

Tea towels are too thin. On occasion my oven gloves are too thin. Keep them in a drawer - they should be hanging on the oven door!

alex , milton keynes, england