Heston's hit Christmas puds on eBay

Celebrity chef Heston Blumenthal's "hidden orange" Christmas puddings are being sold on eBay for twice the retail price, just days after hitting the shelves in Waitrose supermarkets.

A £3.49 clementine pudding is being offered for an incredible £8, while a £13.99 orange pudding is priced at £15.


The inflated prices are a result of the popular puddings, which contain whole candied oranges or clementines beneath the surface, selling out completely for the last two years.

Waitrose has almost trebled the number of puddings on sale from 75,000 to around 225,000 to prevent shortages occurring again this year.

Rupert Thomas at Waitrose said: "Our Heston from Waitrose Hidden Orange Christmas puddings took Britain by storm last Christmas for the second year running, and we have once again upped orders of the show-stopping pud."

However, this has not stopped consumers trying to cash in on the popularity of the puddings, which went on sale in Waitrose stores on Tuesday.

Undoubtedly, they are hoping for a repeat of 2010, when a number of these puddings were attracting bids of as much as £250 on the site.

That may seem crazy, but Christmas puddings are far from the only items to be offered at way above the retail price on eBay.

The new iPhone 5, for example, can be bought online from the Apple store for as little as £529. However, eBay sellers are asking up to £950 for the new 64GB model, which normally retails at £699.

While Apple offers free shipping, those buying iPhones off eBay are also being asked to pay their own postage on top.

If you have a few million burning a hole in your pocket, meanwhile, you may be interested to know that the famous letter in which Albert Einstein openly questions the existence of God is up for sale on eBay - for a starting price of $3.3 million (£2 million).

The current owner bought the letter, in which Einstein writes "the word God for me is nothing more than the expression and product of human weaknesses, the Bible a collection of honourable, but still primitive legends", four years ago for $404,000.