Colm O'Regan: Here's why the hot water bottle trumps the electric blanket

Is there anything more efficient than a hot water bottle?

Comedian and Irish Examiner columnist Colm O'Regan. Picture: Denis Minihane

It is the bicycle of the bed. Nothing to do with riding. I mean it is the object that, give or take a few tweaks and refining, has pretty much the same design principles since its inception.

It is the hot water bottle. Yes, you can put a furry novelty cover on it or maybe mess around with the shape but ultimately the 27th century one that the BioCybermen use will not be too different to the one your mam put into your bed for the nights you came home balubas.

Is there anything more efficient? You take heat, transfer it to a cold place and it slowly heats up the cold place. It works in every house with a kettle or a hob and a source of water.

Or if you prefer your grid-living in the Off Position, hot coals from the dying embers of the fire stored in some sort of earthenware jar wrapped in jute.

Either way the principle is delightfully simple. Put some water in a box, heat the water the box, put the water in another box, put the box into the bed, and before you can say “I don’t know what the Brian Kennedy song was about” your frigid bed has turned into a bed where one bit is frigid and one bit is scalding. But then you adjust and put it on your stomach or under the small of your back or straddle if it’s been one of those days.

There is also the electric blanket option. Why bring water into this when we can sneakily warm you from head to toe?

But electric blankets require a bit of management. A hot water bottle is a loyal friend that gradually loses energy in order to help you, waits until you’re asleep and then gently goes cold on you over time. (We’ve all had to be that friend to someone for a while.)

On the other hand, electric blanket starts off benign, but then if you don’t turn it off before you fall asleep it will slowly George Foreman your arse. That unpleasant warmth makes you have a dream about being shot while on the run from Nazis while getting through a hedge on the farm you grew up on.

The hot water bottle is more sociable. To make one for someone is just one of those acts of love you never see in the films but you should.

That sensuous squeeze of the midriff of the bottle to get excess steam out, the slight squeak of the teatowel as you dry the lid area, the final slosh for the upside-down leak check. Way better than any oul pair of oscillating bottoms.

Seriously fellas, make your wife a hot water bottle for when she gets into the bed, half-cut at 4am and you might get to do that “stupid pointless time-consuming triathlon” after all.

As a dull man, of course I love the efficiency of it. We waste so much money and time heating the space just under the ceiling or under sofa.

Why not rustle up a hot water bottle for some targeted heating? I don’t have to bark at others to close the door and stop heating the road. (Obviously I still do that but I don’t have to).

It’s just a short leap from there to googling hot water clothing. Of course Amazon Japan has a heatable coat.

But like everything in our lives now, it’s USB chargeable.

You don’t open a pocket hood and fill it with a kettle. Hey innovators! The market is clear and the weather is cold. Let’s make it happen! Ganzy the hot water jumper, your time has come.

• Colm O’Regan is on a small comedy tour this Spring in Cork, Galway, Limerick and Listowel with more dates to be added. Tickets are available at colmoregan.com