Interestingly fireplace DVDs, like mangoes and flu vaccines, are highly seasonal. 'I haven't actually plotted sales and temperature on a graph, but yes.' 'We sell a lot of them when there's a cold snap.' I ask Toby if he's serious about customers buying fireplace DVDs in winter like they would warm jackets and he nods. Sirens, a video of models in bikinis swimming enchantingly underwater, had the most potential but failed to sell at trade shows. 'Wives would never let their husbands take one home,' Mark admits. Despite this he tells me a Las Vegas casino plays Sirens on loop at its aqua-themed bar. While we're talking I notice that I feel warm. It's a particularly windy day, and since arriving I've discarded a sweater and jacket. The fireplace has been flickering away in our periphery during the whole conversation. I ask Mark to recall the last time he used his actual fireplace at home, and he's taken aback.

'I've never used my actual fireplace,' he says. I'd much rather turn on the central heating and chuck on a DVD.' 'Why would I? I'd have to chop wood, get the matches out, and clean the whole area. Mark is a walking embodiment of modern values. Rather than engage with the environmentally unsound, economically inefficient, and physically exhausting trials of the past, we seek to replicate effects rather than worry about form.

But in an industry gradually buried by media convergence, Denning seems at peace with putting the game to rest.

Dvd fireplace screensaver