Creativity: How to give Major some teeth

CASTANETS, pastry-cutters, ice-cream scoops, offensive weapons and chewing gum storage receptacles were the favoured uses for dentures in this week's postbag. And the things some of you suggested doing to Yorkshire terriers with them would bring tears to your (or the terriers') eyes.

Here are the best of the publishable ideas:

In the kitchen: meat tenderiser, nut crackers and potato scrapers (several readers), clip for polythene bags in freezer (Colin Dunn), or measuring instrument for bite-sized Shredded Wheat (John Mabbett).

At dinner: toothpick holder (Lilian Leung), or dinner party accessory to eat the food one cannot stand but is too polite to refuse (Isobel Montgomery Campbell), or clicked to attract the attention of waiters (Lindsay Warden).

In the hospital: to seal incisions after operations (Lindsay Warden).

Around the house: door-knocker for dentist (M Underwood), for shy lovers to make love-bites (Len Clarke), as a personalised letter embosser (Andrew Middleton), for tearing the corners off shampoo sachets (Jackie Britton), as a giant clam in the fishtank (Keith Rowlands).

On the sporting field: as a rugby ball support, or attached to sprinter's shoe to aid rapid starts (both Richard Harris), as cue-ball marker for snooker referee (Peter Barr, who claims to have seen one thus used).

In the garden: visual aid for trainee venus fly-traps (John Mabbett), garden glove substitute for holding rose stems (John Reynolds), for dead-heading flowers (Pat Gould), tombstones for woodlice (Lindsay Warden), boot scraper for garden gnomes (P G Hewitt), mole decapitator (Jack Muirhead).

In the national interest: for removing spent fuel rods from pressurised water reactors (Mike Doran), to give teeth to John Major (Pauline Radley) or the English football squad (Katie Stallard), or for gnashing at Gnorman Lamont (Wally Reynolds).

The most educational use, however, comes, complete with a piece of ancestral name-dropping, from Russell Ash who brandishes dentures at his children with the words: 'Your great-great-great-great-great-uncle Claudius Ash invented these - now clean your teeth and you may never need to wear them.'

This week's object is the Eiffel Tower. Creative uses should be sent to Creativity, The Independent, 40 City Road, London EC1Y 2DB.