Wizard Wheeze

Dumbledore was becoming concerned that Harry's interest in the school pegasus may not be entirely innocent.

One of my work colleagues came into work today brandishing a gift for his kid's birthday which turned out to be issue one of the Harry Potter "learn how to play chess" partwork.

Oooh look, it's got a special magic wand (a.k.a. a lump of plastic with magnet in it) with which you can move your first chess piece (a rook with another magnet in it) and a book with lots of pictures of Daniel and his pals (though none fondling equines I suppose) that teaches you how to play chess. Bargain at £1.99 - future issues priced at four quid.

OK so lets work this out. Thirty two peices in a chess set at four quid a pop comes to over 125 quid, even allowing for the fact that you get the first one half price, plus it's going to take you over seven months to collect all the bits so you can actually play your first game, by which time any normal child will have lost the first rook, the wand, three of the pawns and the "neighing knight" will be full of sand after being taken to the beach one day and will be mightily disinclined to neigh, whinny, whicker or say "Oooh Harry, I love it when you talk dirty. Why don't you bring that owl of yours next time and we'll have a threesome". After seven months I think your child's interest in chess will have long since waned, assuming of course you can track down anywhere selling the part-work after issue 10, so you're probably just going to keep treading on "exploding pawns" and "glowing queens" for a couple of years until you move house and throw all the tat away.

Look chess is a great game, I learnt it when I was a hatchling and even got good enough to play for the school (not that we won anything!). It teaches you strategy, logic, problem solving and even how to lose and restrain yourself from inserting a bishop up your opponent's nose in a fit of pique. However there are I am sure there are cheaper and better ways to learn than spending all that money on a novelty chess set - bloody hell you can buy marble ones for less! But then I guess J.K wouldn't be able to buy another castle or that carribean island would she.