I would really hope that this bid is never honoured. While it’s obvious to those of us with rational minds that this is only an auction for a picture, it’s equally clear from the sale price that the bidder thinks this is the torch itself. (Why? We will probably never know.)

A couple of years back, I had an ebayer removed for attempting to auction ‘Apple MacBook Pro 2.16GHz Dual Core 2GB RAM 150GB box’. Looking at the picture, I began to suspect the item was just the box. Bids had already passed £200 but when I looked at his past ratings, someone else had paid £500+ for the same rip-off a few months earlier.

Although that buyer gave the guy a negative rating, it seemed they had never taken it any further. In fact, he had the cheek to reply: “Should have read the description properly.”