I need a new kettle and toaster. What do you recommend for cooked water and hot bread?

AGaGu loves a bit of tea and toast, and top of the pile for him is the Sage by Heston Blumenthal range. Now, Guru has no idea if toast is even served in the dome-head food wizard’s magic munching laboratories – if it is, presumably it tastes of saffron, and comes in the form of vapour – but his toaster is a miracle of easy use and stylishness. And it also makes perfectly nice toast. Come on though, it’s toast. You could make it using a cigarette lighter if you really wanted to.

Heston also makes a splendid kettle, with – no word of a lie – specific buttons for white and oolong tea (plus coffee, green tea and, well, tea. Different hot beverages require different water temperatures, you see?

GaGu likes the Sage range because it’s all in hefty, brushed stainless steel, which reminds him of guns.

Plenty of other options, though. KitchenAid makes cracking kettles and tasty toasters. Guru favours its main range, but if you like your breakfast basics totally over-specced, you could try KitchenAid Artisan instead.

The kettle is a squat, hefty thing that looks like you could do weight training with it, while the toaster not only looks like a London bus, it also weighs about the same, and takes up a similar amount of worktop space.

Dualit, of course, is King of the Retro Toaster and worth considering if you like timeless looks and longevity.

Prefer something more edgy? Graef, from Germany, makes toasters of ruthless efficiency, with the Bauhaus aesthetic that shapes everything Guru does, from his house to his moustache. It also makes ker-razy looking kettles with weird, snub-like spouts.

Or go totally OTT, and get the Bugatti range. Its toaster and kettle are outrageously expensive and overdesigned, to the point where they’re actually quite annoying to use. But my gosh they make a statement; namely, “Oim considerably richer than yow.”