ARE you keen to spend hundreds of thousands on items the person sharing a home with you can plausibly claim not to have noticed? Waste it like Murrell: 

Upgrade minor personal items

Look around you. Is there a cup? A coaster? A notepad and pen? What if you still had those same things, but they cost thousands of pounds? Seems impossible, but check out the luxury brands Murrell favoured and you too could spend £975 on three Davek Saville umbrellas. They keep the rain off just like cheap ones! Your wife will never know!

Upgrade them again

Buying a bean-to-cup coffee maker? No rational person, like the one you’re married to, would expect it could cost more than £500 even for one of those George Clooney ones so a £1,299 one will go under the radar. Not spent enough? Upgrade to a £1,875 one three years later? Still got the itch? There’s a £2,595 one available!

Invest in collectibles

It’s not throwing money down the drain when you’re guaranteed to get it back, so shrewdly invest in items that can only appreciate in value like James Bond pens, Beatles pens, watches that look identical to any other posh watch, and sterling silver Kelpie beakers. Pop these in a cupboard and get them out to gloat over when your other half isn’t around.

Inexplicable multiples

If one item’s gone under your partner’s radar, she’s basically given you the green light to buy six of it! So four days after buying yourself a Nintendo 3DS, get three more in different colours. Swap them at will and she’ll have no clue you’ve rewarded yourself with a whole spectrum of gaming fun to play The Sims 3: Pets on under her very nose!

Hide the big stuff 

Blowing thousands on unnoticeable household items becoming tedious? Then buy the camper van of your dreams but cunningly conceal it at the house of a relative and never, ever use it. You’ll still get that tingle of acquisition when you think of it and occasionally slip in to stroke the leather fixtures and fittings, murmuring ‘This is mine’ to yourself.

Don’t neglect the cheaper items

It may not be as enviable, but treating yourself to hand cream, a glass honey dipper, a Le Creuset wine foil remover, a swing ball set and a weather station means there will be new parcels to open every day, and that’s just as much fun! But no need to advise you to do this. Everyone in Britain does it every day already.