Top lists for the rich, stupid and slack

Snakes and Ladders is bracing itself for a deluge of traffic this week after a survey showed that one in three employees have mentally switched off work in favour of logging on to the web.

Although technically at work, it appears many of you are counting down the days to Christmas by; shopping, indulging in long lunches and faffing around on the internet, rather than doing any real graft, according to a poll of 2,500 people by Teletext Holidays.

However, some particularly splendid faffing around by one of our colleagues (Thanks, Mike) has revealed two neat follow-ups to my post on ten totally stupid business ideas that made someone rich, which you may remember included such classics as Doggles and plastic wishbones.

The first is the seven most embarrassing celebrity business plan failures. These include Don Johnson, of Miami Vice fame, whose implausibly named real estate firm Timber Doodle Glade Equity Venture ran up huge debts - including $5,000 in unpaid grocery bills. And actress Kim Basinger who bought a Georgia town for $20million with the idea of building a mini Hollywood except everyone preferred to stay in Hollywood.

The second is the ten most bizarre e-shops in Europe and Russia; this is a round-up of weird and wonderful websites which promise an endless supply of black socks, hamsters and pornographic bears to those of you with a desperate need for monochrome socks, small fluffy animals and rudeness.

Yes, it is difficult to envisage that many of these e-shops will survive till next Christmas but, in contrast to us office slackers, entrepreneurs are a notoriously hard working bunch. A survey by UK Business Forums found that 10 per cent of entrepreneurs are eschewing Christmas in favour of work with a further 33 per cent making time on the big day to check work e-mails or do something else work related - well what do you expect with the Only Fools and Horses Christmas special axed.