A game with a name more interesting than the game itself. My parents have this under their spare room bed, there is a lovely thick layer of dust on it, which shows just how often the family play it! It was bought for one of those Christmasses where you imagine everyone is going to sit around and play games with each other; the reality turns out to be people shutting themselves in different rooms and relatives looking at watches and 'making a move' not long after lunch.

So onto Jenga. Wooden blocks in a box. You stack them up and sandwich them together into a tower. The next step, players take turns to remove pieces from the middle, without knocking the tower over. If you crash it, the game is over. Simple concept, simple to set up and fun for all ages. Well not quite. I am all for playing games and I adore board games where you whizz around a board and collect things and make money. The only enjoyment here is looking at a pile of bricks. Sorry to sound so miserable, but you could recreate the game by simply stacking household objects on top of each other and trying to put out the ones from the middle without crashing your tower.

On the plus side, the game is better when you are drunk and you are more clumsy. The game then becomes hilarious as Uncle Frank tries to show off and pull out the very bottom piece, causing the tower to collapse.

I would not mind one game of this every once in while, but it is not a game that I would want to play for more than fifteen minutes. The restacking of the blocks and the precision of removing the blocks is far too much effort. It is possibly better to play this while doing something else, like watching a programme on TV or listening to music.

A Jenga set can cost anything from five to ten pounds and is available from most toy stores. Well made, with nice chunky blocks, but just too bland for me.