I needed to buy a toaster for my Lunch in Venice rehearsals.

The whole cast eat pizza throughout the play and they will need to practice eating and acting at the same time. Not easy.

I had permission to splash out a massive £3.50 on a Tesco’s Value toaster, then decided to the blow the budget and get a 4 slice model instead of the 2 slice, so I could toast twice as much in one go!

Rich and I went over to Brooklands this afternoon and, having spent 15 minutes trying to get a parking space on the M&S side, (Credit crunch? What credit crunch?) we had a quick forage for the Tesco’s toaster.

No such luck. They had the 2 slice model, but the 4 slice had been discontinued. Oh well. I could have gone for the 2 slice, but something was saying said not to.

Anyway, off we went to Curry’s and Argos round the corner. Rich wanted to look at TV’s and guess what, completely by accident, I came across an Argos Value toaster complete with a ‘cool touch’, a ‘variable browning control’ and wait for it, a ‘cancel button’!

Whooppee!!

And to top it all, it was a white 4 slice model at a bargain £6.92!

Naturally I queued up with my little bit of gold coloured plastic and waited!

- Cashier number 5, please!

Two minutes later I was the proud owner of a FREE 4 slice toaster!

FREE????

Yep – courtesy of the marvelous Marks and Spencer!

You see, I bought some underwear there a couple of months ago – though now they are coming unstitched so I popped into the Brooklands branch after I’d parked and asked for a replacement.

They offered a refund, but I think the poor trainee must have got a little confused.

The underwear had come in a pack of three, and I had bought two packs. However, I’d left two pairs at home, since they were in the wash, and so she had four pairs in front of her, which I dutifully pointed out.

“Oh, four”, she said, and promptly typed x4 into her till, refunding me 4x£3 for two packs of value underwear at £3 per pack! So, £10 up since I had two pairs at a pound each at home in the wash, I was able to get a toaster effectively for free and still be £3.08 in credit!

Thanks M&S – RYT will be making very good use of their FREE value toaster, and I’ve got another £3 to buy some more value underwear!