Buy a piece of history: the Dome destroyed

It's our generation's complete, abject failure. You'll be telling your grandchildren about it. "Yes, so they spent over a billion pounds (which was a lot of money in those days) on this big dish thing and the most exciting bit about it was when armed robbers tried to steal a diamond there - which was actually made of glass."

And that is why, now that its infamous contents are up for auction, you should grab a bit of history while you can. Maybe a hamster cage, or a Lighthouse Strength Tester (?!). Or perhaps pubic lice from the Body Zone (straight up).

And, maintaining its position in the public conscious, the forward-thinking Dome has completely failed to make the auction an attraction. If you visit the Dome Web site, you can read some very sketchy details of stuff available and then find the telephone number to call if you are interested in purchasing any of the lots that you don't know much about.

So vivacious and up-to-date is the Dome that it has never heard of eBay. You'd think that here at least was somewhere that the Dome could finally be a success. But no. In fact, until a story in the Mirror this morning - pointing out that the official Web site still thought the Dome was open - you could buy tickets for the "attraction" online. The company behind the billion-pound dustbin has swiftly pulled the site and popped in a front page saying: "Information on this site is currently out of date and is being updated." But then is anyone really surprised?

That said, the auctions will still be taking place between 27 February and 2 March so we advise you to try and get a bit of it to point at and laugh. Look here for more details. We had a bit of a brain-storming session over what other memorabilia we would like from history's abject failures. These are what we came up with:

• The handlebars of a Sinclair C5
  
• A brick or lump of concrete from the Maginot line
  
• A Betamax machine
  
• The insignia of one of Napoleon's Moscow troops
  
• A Reynolds Girls single
  
• A mammoth skull (one million of them wiped out in just 3,000 years apparently)
  

So now's your chance. ®

Related Links

Dome site
Auction area of Dome site (poor)