Use banana skins, potatoes to polish shoes, advises new book! . Bananas and potatoes can prove really useful when it comes to polishing shoes, suggests updated version of the Second World War booklet Make Do and Mend. The updated version of the book, originally published by the Ministry of Information in 1943,advises on more modern ways to save money. If your shoes are badly scuffed, rubbing half a raw potato and then wiping them clean can help.

Other tips in department store John Lewis Make Do and Mend 2009 book include using toothpaste to clean jewellery and Sellotape to remove bright yellow lily pollen before it stains. The booklet also includes modern advice to save money, such as performing a nightly phone charger check to make sure they are not needlessly draining electricity.

"This guide is designed to help households to get the very best out of what they have," the Telegraph quoted Andy Street, managing director of John Lewis as saying. "Our lives are far more complicated than they were in the 1940s and we ve forgotten some of the basic principles that can save a lot of time and unnecessary expense," Street added.

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