A 'new experience' in showering has just been launched in Switzerland. Susie Steiner reports on the baffling concept that is the lying-down shower

Where to begin on the sheer stupidity and fruitlessness of horizontal showering? It's time to put the 'no' into this innovation, and quickly, before the nation begins to writhe helplessly like beached seals on a platter of dead skin cells and tepid body fluids. The horizontal shower is wrong, wrong, wrong for so many reasons - the primary one being its resemblance to a mortuary slab.

This absurd contraption has just been launched in Switzerland by a company called Dornbracht, which exclaimed rather breathlessly that it is "expanding the vertical showering experience". Stupid? It gets stupider ...

According to the press release, "With this application, Dornbracht is once again setting a trend in the shower area." The CEO, Andreas Dornbracht, insists we'll all be needing a horizontal shower soon: "With Horizontal Shower, we are transporting the showering experience into a new dimension," he says. "The result is total relaxation, the kind only experienced by someone reclining. Tension in the head and muscles melts away, everyday stress is washed away with the water; body and mind are revitalized."

By now, you'll be itching to know about the Ambiance Tuning Technique which goes with the horizontal shower, despite your inability to clean the tide marks off your stomach or get up off your slab because you keep slipping over like a flip-flopping bit of overweight marine life. Well, the ATT, as I like to call it, uses different flows and temperatures of water to create massaging experiences. You can enjoy the horizontal shower lying either on your stomach or your back, when it will presumably relentlessly pelt your face.

Showering in a new dimension ...

The arguments for improving the vertical shower are strong, of course: its ludicrous ability to get a human body clean in minutes by making use of the simple laws of gravity; its compactness; and its pleasurable physical sensation. But I say we adopt a bit of blue-sky thinking and push the envelope that bit further. The upside-down shower! That's what we need to turn showering on its head.

Incidentally, if you think the horizontal shower is a useful addition to modern sanitaryware, then you may also be interested in purchasing the handy and undeniably jaunty toilet roll hat.

Alternatively, share your favourite invention turkeys below.