Christmas creche for men

Some men prefer gaming to shopping

One of the UK's largest shopping centres has opened a creche with a difference.

Instead of just taking in children, the Lakeside complex in Essex is offering a haven to men stressed out by shopping.

Or, looking at it another way, to the women who are saddled with dragging them from store to store.

Men have not got the shopping gene

Jeremy Baker, retail analyst

The creche offers men a range of computer games and internet access to help them recover from the retail experience.

The Flipside creche is due to stay open until Christmas, but could become a permanent fixture if it proves popular.

An advertisement for the creche asks female shoppers: "Tired of him and need a break? Book him into Flipside internet male creche for an hour's free internet gaming. Go on, you know you want to."

Jeremy Baker, a retail analyst from London Guildhall University, believes the male aversion to shopping has developed over hundreds of years.

He said: "I think genetically men have not got the shopping gene and women, somehow over the last two million years, did create the shopping gene for themselves.

"That is what we can see if we look around now. They are lying back and enjoying it, and men are all resentful and feeling a bit out of place."

There may be plenty of custom for the Flipside creche this year.

A recent survey suggested that three out of 10 people found Christmas shopping more stressful than looking after a young baby.