To get to the top you really have to cut out of your life anything that's not important.". Aga cookers appear to be one of the bastions of Middle England, firmly attached to the popular image of a rural idyll. One can almost see the thick winter broth bubbling on the stove, stirred by a well-heeled lady, gold bracelets jangling, waiting for her financier husband and her privately educated teenagers to return to the fold. But Agas have a more prosaic background than this picture would suggest. A year ago the company was united with a manufacturer of metal pipes and before that it was part of a large Midlands-based metal basher, in both cases under the Glynwed International umbrella. Now renamed Aga Foodservice, it is a pure kitchenware business, selling to the consumer and the catering industry.As such, it is also trying to broaden its horizons by marketing its ranges to a funkier crowd. It has launched a set of jazzy new colours, is developing a more city-friendly electric oven, and spending £3m on store refurbishments and a new ad campaign featuring well-dressed "Iron Age" women and men."We want to show that [our range] can be urban and a little more trendy.

It's not purely about a country product for the older consumer," says chief executive William McGrath.Mr McGrath's target is to increase sales of the cookers from 7,000 a year to 10,000 by 2003. The company's ambitious plans to expand in the US may have suffered a slight hitch in the current economic climate, but expansion is also taking place in Europe.The other plan is to get Aga fans buying up complementary kitchen products. New fridges to match the cookers are being launched, while bathroom fittings, paint and tiles are provided by the company's recent acquisition, Fired Earth.The only problem with expansion is the price tag on Aga's main product. The cookers may be owned by the likes of Bill Gates and Madonna, but at more than £5,000 apiece they could never be aimed at a wider market But that's what Mr McGrath likes to do best. He's also branching out into setting up bakeries for supermarkets, which has proved to be a lucrative trade, and making industrial equipment for catering companies."It's those sort of little niche markets that we think that there's real scope for," he says.But it's still always going to be an upper-crust trade. You might think that an Aga in a certain house in Sedgefield, County Durham would be an exception to the rule, but you'd be wrong It's the one owned by the Prime Minister..

Europeans have only five shopping weeks to Christmas – five weeks before their francs, marks, lire and so on are taken away and replaced by euros. Big question: when they get those euros in their wallets and purses, will they save them or spend them? Here in Britain the debate about the euro has become subsumed into the G&T show – Gordon and Tony. Next Tuesday Gordon produces his pre-Budget statement and gets his brief moment in the sun before the focus shifts back to the PM. The inevitable tensions of recent times broke out last week, with their different views about the advisability of the UK adopting the euro the key grounds for friction.But if you look from outside Britain, the whole argument looks very different. As an issue, whether we eventually join or not is only just showing on the radar What matters is whether the euro is a success. If you stand back from the G&T business, that will be the key determinant as to whether we will indeed eventually adopt it.

So what do the tea-leaves tell us?One point should be dismissed straight away: the smoothness or otherwise of the launch. There will inevitably be a bit of a scramble on the Continent in January when the notes and coins start circulating and the indigenous currencies are withdrawn. But the launch will not be a catastrophe at a logistical level and in a few weeks things will have settled down. Expect a clutch of anti-euro stories and expect the currency initially to be unpopular, particularly in Germany. There will be a row about retailers and their suppliers using the new currency to round up their prices. But if the European economy thrives then any initial roughness will be forgiven.Unfortunately, the short-term outlook has become increasingly discouraging. The politicians who drew up the timetable for the launch of the euro could not have known that it would coincide with the first synchronised global downturn for 30 years.Last week it was confirmed that Germany was in recession, having suffered two quarters of negative growth.