While Alexander Graham Bell did us a massive favour by inventing the phone, opening the way for cross-continent communication and a means to organise evenings of massive excess, he also gave us one of the most devastating tools of annoyance known to man. You see what Al, if we can call him Al, didn't bank on was the ruthlessly capitalistic era we now live in.

His invention allows our bank to bother us with talk of massive overdrafts, missed loan payments and foreclosure, and other companies to generally hassle us with customer satisfaction surveys and promises of free money.

Sadly, avoiding these calls isn't always as simple as simply hanging up. No, in order to maintain the pretence of calm, level-headedness, sometimes it's necessary to come up with a plausible excuse as to why you can't take the call. The problem with excuses, though, is that once you've used one, you can't use the same one again, unless you can back it up with evidence, which is where the Phone Excuse Gadget comes into its own.

By using each excuse sound effect sparingly - crying baby, door bell, siren, interference, car crashing and food delivery - you can get out of more or less any tricky situation. Your boss is on one line wondering where your crucial report is, simply play him the sound of a panel-bending car crash and then see if he's so keen to interrogate you when he calls back, 'I'm fine, honest. No there's not much blood. But then again I can't see...' should just about do it.