HERE'S a dilemma for you to ponder. My friend ordered himself a Wii on t'internet from a well-known electronics store. He claimed it was for his daughters, but he wasn't fooling anyone.

He got an email message to say it had been delivered. Unfortunately, he was still completely Wii-free, so he sent a strongly-worded message back to that effect.

Another Wii duly arrived and he was happy as Larry (particularly when he knocked out both his mother-in-law and his six-year-old daughter in consecutive on-screen boxing bouts).

Then, a day or two later, his neighbour arrived with a Wii under his arm. It had been delivered to his house a week or so earlier, had been set aside for safekeeping and promptly completely forgotten about.

So, now my friend had not one new Wii, but two.

The question I would like you to ponder, discuss, cogitate and, if the mood takes you, have a knock-down, fall-out scrap about is this: would you return the spare Wii or flog it on eBay?

This might seem like a trivial question, but I think the answer says a lot about us as people. It indicates whether we are fundamentally honest, whether we can be totally trusted or whether our morals are a little on the loose side.

You might not be entirely shocked to discover that, after much humming and hawing, it turns out that my morals are so baggy they are flapping round my ankles.

I would flog the spare Wii in a second and be spending my unjust rewards on Coney Street before you could say you're nicked'.

I would never pinch a bag of crisps from the corner shop, but I'd happily profit from a mistake made by a big electronics chain. For me, it's a no-brainer.

My beloved is equally as definite. He would send the spare back - he's probably even pay for the postage - because to do otherwise would be stealing. For him, keeping the Wii would be tantamount to picking a pocket. There's no moral ambiguity. It's just plain wrong.

So, what would you do? Own up or cash in?

I don't want to influence your decision, but so far among the people I have asked about 80 per cent have said they would keep the Wii and to hell with the consequences (including the mate at the centre of the initial dilemma, who flogged the spare to a bloke at work).

But maybe this says less about the general moral compass of society and more about the company I keep.


* It's not often that I'm shocked by polls. So what if nine out of ten people think we are descended from alien vampires? And who gives a hoot if two out of five people think Amy Winehouse is a figment of the Daily Mail's fevered imagination?

But a new poll saying that one in four adults has not read a book in the last year completely stopped me in my tracks.

I can't get through a single day without reading, never mind a whole year. Even if I'm completely dead on my feet, I can barely keep my eyes open and I've got to be up in what seems like a matter of minutes, I can't switch my bedside light off without reading a few pages of something.

Call it an obsession if you like (because that's what it is), but I fantasise about running a book shop, I spend countless hours in Borders and Waterstone's and the like, I order far too many books online and I'm not happy unless I have a teetering stack of fresh novels by the bed.

I can't handle second-hand books though. The thought of reading a novel that someone else has been sneezing and coughing over turns my stomach.

Which, now I come to think about it, means I should be happy that one in four of you is now foregoing reading.

At least when I eventually open my bookshop, you won't be cluttering up the place, spluttering over my books.