A man sits in the pouring rain outside a city centre shop wearing an all-in-one body suit fashioned from slepping bag material. He is joined overnight by a 200-strong line of people, but steps aside at 6.30am in the morning to make way for another man who has just bought his first-place spot in the queue for £45 off the auction site eBay.

Yes, it's the iPhone queue outside Apple's flagship Regent Street store in London.

The doors open at 8am and the patient queue gets its just reward - a two-hour wait to switch on their precious new gizmos as mobile operator 02's activation servers suffer a nervous breakdown...