I was listening to Home Truths recently (BBC Radio 4 - it's available on-line) when the discussion turned to Strange Apparati Upon Which to Make Music. Someone was doing strange things with hip bones - or, to be precise, the bits left over after hip replacement surgery.

Another person did something which involved cutting off the trumpet-y bit of a trumpet, rejoining it using a garden hose, then swinging the garden hose overhead while playing the trumpet. Very weird effects can be achieved, if you believe the reviews.

Someone else was waxing lyrical about tying threads to the two ends of a wire coat hanger, wrapping the other ends of the threads around your fingers, sticking your fingers in your ears, then walking about letting the coat hanger bang up against things. It apparently makes neat sounds.

One caller claimed to have been able to play Amazing Grace on an egg slicer back in the '60s - but that modern slicers no longer have this ability.

I must have led a sheltered life; apart from blowing into pop bottles or buzzing around with tissue paper and a comb, my instrumental dabblings have been mundane to say the least.

I thought there might be 'Catters, however, who have experimented in this direction.

sian