Going, going, gone - my desperate bid to find Iggle Piggle

To judge by the Night Garden paraphernalia on eBay and the turnover - five in a minute at a peak last week - there is a thriving black market. I like to think that somewhere in Docklands there is a container full of small woollen creatures about to be secreted off to men in mackintoshes: "I can get you a large Upsy and a Tombliboo knitting pattern. No questions asked."

Its Lear-like character names, Derek Jacobi's mesmeric intonation, a night sea scene à la Caspar David Friedrich - and a cast of characters from the Tombliboos (who are so small "that even when there's lots of them, they're hardly there at all") to the aforesaid Piggle who is never ready for bed - make this twilight world unmissable.

So much so that on a blank midweek TV night, the grown-ups in our house have been known to sink down in front of it with a glass of wine long after the small ones are, as Mr Jacobi would put it, "safe and snug and drifting off to sleep".

For a small daughter's first cognisant Christmas, there was really only ever going to be one present to hit the spot. A modestly proportioned grey creature, amorphous with a talking tummy: no thing of beauty, but definitely the one and only Iggle Piggle.

For the first hour on eBay I bid small stuffed-toy prices and was beaten every time. Serious Piggle hunters were kicking in at £20 for a small one, £40 for a bigger one - and the sky's the limit for characters afflicted by an inexplicable shortage. "Rare!" promises one seller as if it were a Rembrandt line drawing.

It wasn't just the money - the rush of bids at the last minute meant I was constantly outfoxed. Fearing the onset of madness, I selected books and an Iggle and set the egg timer. A couple of nanosecond bids went against me. With a toy selling every three minutes, there was always hope. Four, three, two and yesss: "You are the successful bidder!"

Ten days on and naturally, the books have turned up but Iggle himself is still being bumped around the Royal Mail. But in the Night Garden, we never give up. It always turns out all right in the end, just before bedtime. Now good night, Tombliboos.