In addition to brewing a lovely cup of tea (or instant coffee if you'd rather) the machine also hands you the paper, soft-boils an egg, toasts some toast, and clears up afterwards.

As others have noted it's remarkably like breakfast machines imagined by the creators of Pee-Wee's Big Adventure, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang and of course, Wallace and Gromit.

It's a charming idea, even if constructing it does mean expending a considerable amount of effort in order to to avoid very simple cooking tasks. Tea and toast is not exactly a sumptuous brunch spread. But, still, we're getting hungry.

Clearly, it's time to fire up the machine again.