This was the moment that 2009′s X Factor came to an emotional finale, with people’s favourite Joe McElderry singing his way to a stunning top spot. The 18-year-old student from South Shields – the same home town as his mentor, the gorgeous Cheryl Cole – performed magnificently throughout the competition and stole the hearts of fans up and down the country. Over 10 million votes were cast on the final day – proving the staggering popularity of the show – and Joe came out on top with around 61% of the votes. Congratulations Joe!

For all wannabe pop stars out there, we have four essential items for hire on erento that are ideal to start honing your craft. If you plan to show up for auditions in 2010, get practising now and give yourself the competitive edge!

1. Microphone hire

It’s one thing singing in the shower but something else completely to project professionally through a microphone in the way X Factor contestants are expected to. If you’re serious about your pop career, learning ‘stagecraft’ is an essential part of your education and that includes correct microphone technique. Hire a classic vocal mic from as little as £5 a day.

2. PA hire

A PA system takes the signal from the microphone and pumps it out the speakers for the whole auditorium to hear. Hire one together with your microphone for the full professional effect.

3. Jukebox hire

Some people go for karaoke machines, but another great way to practice your vocal technique is singing along to the original track. You could do it to a record. But for that authentic vintage feel, why not hire a classic Gazelle jukebox. Ideal for rock n’ roll classics.

4. Mirror hire

When it comes to the X Factor, looks and dance moves count almost as much as your vocal performance. Hire a full length standing mirror to coax your quiff to maximum effect, check you profile and perfect your spins and turns before the big audition!

With the festive season upon us and so many Christmas parties and events to organise, here we offer 10 top tips on what to rent to get your party swinging. The beauty of erento is that it brings together a wide range of suppliers under one virtual roof. Think of it as a massive rental shopping mall. This means you haven’t far to go to find everything you need for that great Xmas do. Read on for ideas on what to hire …

1. Christmas Tree

No Christmas is complete without a beautifully decorated tree under which to place your presents. For businesses who need to rent in a Xmas tree for the season, look no further than these excellent large trees. They will be delivered, decorated and taken down again once Christmas has passed for another year.

2. Seasonal decorations

Equally important are some glorious Chirstmas decorations to brighten up the room. Don’t delay! Get your tinsel, wreaths and other shiny sparkly Xmas baubels today.

3. Smoke Machine

If you’re organising a Christmas party or disco a smoke machine is a great addition. But it’s not just for parties! Perhaps you are staging a Nativity play and want a bit smoke for atmosphere. Whatever your need for smoke, a smoke machine produces it.

4. String Lights

Ever wondered what it would be like to have a Christmas scene without string lights to create that cosy nostalgic Xmas mood? It’s simply unthinkable.

5. Cocktail Bar

No Xmas party, by the company or otherwise, would be complete without a great cocktail bar. Get in the Xmas spirit and serve seasonal cocktails, with plenty of crushed ice!

6. Snow Machine

If there’s one thing that just about everyone loves but can never be guaranteed to happen it’s a white Christmas. These snow machines will do the trick though, whatever the weather.

7. Snowman Costume

Entertain the kids by not only building a snowman in the garden (if it snows), but by dressing up as a snowman and running around the house like a giant frozen water man-resembling loony. They’ll love you for it.

8. Snowdrop Earrings

What better way to have a glamorous Christmas than with these earrings in the shape of snowdrops? Well, you could jet off to Zermatt for a spot of heli-skiing then do apres ski wearing a mink coat. But that’s not what Christmas is about. It’s about baubels, tinsel and everything that glitters – including snowdrop shaped earrings. Get ‘em before they melt!

9. BBQ Grill

Not the most obvious Christmas hire item, but not every British family chooses to celebrate Christmas in the traditional way. If you’re bored of roast turkey or simply cannot stand to be inside on the holiday, fire up the BBQ grill, wrap up warm and grill a few sausages and bits of marinated chicken.

10. Coach

While for many Christmas is a time for spending time with the family, others prefer to avoid the family and head out for a day trip. Hiring a coach is just the ticket for a large group. Of course, if you do want to be together with the whole family on the big day, what better way to round everyone up and get to the same event than in a lovely big coach?

However you end up spending Christmas this year, we wish you a very merry one!

Case in point: today Google continues its celebration of Sesame Street’s 40th anniversary with a second Sesame Street doodle in as many days. Yesterday, Google users around the world saw the yellow legs of Big Bird on the Google homepage. Today, they are greeted with what at first appears to be an abstract surfing wave but which on closer inspection is clearly the Cookie Monster, in the process of munching Google’s search box. As far as we know, Google has never changed its doodle on consecutive days and created two separate designs to celebrate the same TV show. If anyone out there knows differently, let us know.

Google’s doodles are kept top secret and have made the man behind them, doodler Dennis Hwang, perhaps the most famous Google employee in the world after founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin.

Here at erento we’re proud of our logo, but that’s not to say we don’t imagine a time when headhunting Dennis Hwang from Silicon Valley isn’t an option. Dennis, if you’re reading, we’d love you to relocate to Berlin and come and doodle for us. At present, it looks like this:

Halloween is just around the corner and we are bracing ourselves for a peak in interest in party equipment and catering hire as people across the British Isles get ready to celebrate this ancient, spooky festival.

In preparation, we have created a new Halloween Theme World and put a new teaser on the erento homepage.

Since we welcomed on board Brighton fancy dress specialist Revamp – which you can read about on the erento news site here – we are proud to be able to offer online shoppers a one-stop-shop for Halloween costume hire.

Revamp stocks some stunning outfits, all available for around £25 for a three-day hire period. They include:

Pumpkin Witch – This cheeky witch’s outfit is the colour of a Halloween pumpkin. The sleeveless veleveteen mini dress has a lace up bodice and a black net underskirt and it’s teamed up with a velveteen witch’s hat.

Lord Lucifer - This handsome devil’s outfit consists of a red top with muscle chest, a red hooded cape with a medallion clasp, a gold skull belt, red gloves and black boot tops.

Sexy Devil – A devilishly sexy look! This sleeveless red velveteen mini dress with bodice front has a detachable devil’s tail.

Egyptian Mummy – Somebody let the Mummy out! It’s coming after you in a long cream hooded robe with attached strips of material, a sash to tie round the waist and across the chest, an eye mask and boot covers.

Skeleton Zombie – This zombie’s been hanging around for some time. The costume consists of brown ripped trousers with foam rubber bones attached. A ripped top with attached chest cavity, skeleton hand gloves and a plastic skeleton mask with strands of brown material attached.

Edward Scissorhands Recreate one of Johnny Depp’s most endearing characters. The costume consists of a black top with foam belts detail, a black messy wig and gloves with attached foam rubber scissor blades on the fingers.

Pirate Skeleton – This pirate skeleton costume is ideal for both pirate and film themed parties or for a ghostly Halloween outfit. The black top has a skeleton design and a torn grey muslin shirt is worn over it. The black gloves also have skeleton markings. Red trousers, boot covers, a belt and a bandana complete the costume.

Pimp Devil – And my personal favourite, pictured above: This devil is one smooth operator. He’s wearing a long black pvc coat with red fake fur trim and an attached devil’s tail at the back, black pvc trousers and a wide brimmed black pvc hat with red fur trim and horns on the top.

Devilish!

There are plenty more outfits to choose from. Take a look at Halloween costume hire.

Our congratulations go out to British racing driver Jenson Button, who has won the Formula One world championship after a thrilling penultimate drive at the Brazilian Grand Prix. Button came from 14th on the grid to finish 4th after a series of daring passing moves, putting him beyond the reach of his nearest competitor in the driver’s championship ahead of the final race next week.

While nothing can quite match the experience of driving an F1 car in the heat of a grand prix, here at erento we have something that comes close: the F1 Driving Simulator. The very best of these is a £48,000 unit (right) fitted with the very latest PRO ST responsive steering and pedal control system currently available.

The simulator is a full-sized reproduction of an F1 car, offering players an authentic driving seat position and a strong responsive steering system. A fully immersive triple-screen display allows the person in the hotseat to see around the corner, allowing them to attack the bends with maximum aggression and accuracy. The unit comes with a £1,900 paddle shift steering wheel with working rev lights and integral LCD screen, making the simulation as close-to-real as possible in a static model.

If the full-sized model is just a bit too large, the same supplier provides a range of smaller F1 simulator models. For example, the SF2-styled unit (left) is three quarter-sized, but it still squeezes in the responsive steering, true driving position, authentic race tyres and full in-car sound system, just like the full-sized unit. As with all the supplier’s F1 styled units, this one is fully brandable, with livery options on the shell and game customisation available as well.

The festive season will soon be upon us! Whereas most of us will either dust off an old artificial Christmas tree dragged from the back of the cupboard, or source a real tree from the garden centre, there will be those among us who would rather rent the tree. Yes, fair readers! In this day and age, it’s possible to rent just about anything, and that stalwart of the Xmas festivities, around which gifts stack and children gather in wonder, is no exception.

In particular, Christmas tree hire is an increasingly popular option with building managers and the corporate sector more generally, as well as being an obvious choice out of season for decorative effect, e.g. as a stage prop.

But it is in commercial buildings where the rented Christmas tree is an ideal solution. The tree photographed here, for example, comes fully decorated; and the flat rate price (£315 for a month) includes delivery, setting the tree up and taking it down again once the Christmas period is over.

See Christmas hire to view our full selection of trees.

When W.B. Yeats wrote unerringly that all had ‘Changed/ changed utterly/ A terrible beauty is born’, was he gazing forward in history to the moment when the first Ducati Streetfighter rolled off the production line and into modern-day legend?

Well, in short, no. The great poet was surveying the upheavals of Irish national history, of course.

But Yeats’s stirring words do perfect justice to this magnificent motorcycle: an elegantly brutal realisation of menace, power, and startlingly fine looks. erento users who are planning a break on the Côte d’Azur can now rent the Streetfighter for €195 a day from Columbus International, which can also deliver your bike anywhere within a 100km radius of Cannes, or pick you up from Nice airport if you prefer.

If you can’t quite afford to push the boat out for the Streetfighter – and let’s face it, if you’re off to play in this uber-playground of the rich and famous, you’ll need all the spare cash you can muster – fear not gentle readers: there are four more affordable bikes to choose from that are no less glorious.

For example, you can pick up the last model of the original Ducati Monster family – the splendid SR2 1000 (above) – for just €145 a day.

See Ducati hire in France for the full range.

Of all the musical instruments, the piano evokes perhaps the strongest link with the notion of genius. We think of Beethoven’s sonatas, Mozart’s dancing fingers and the stomping keyboard technique of Little Richard. Pianos are quite simply the grandest instruments around. Yet by virtue of the ease with which anyone at all, even a toddler, can coax sounds from it simply by pressing keys, it is also perhaps the most accessible instument of all.

The above ‘Baby Grand’ style piano is now available for rent on erento in Piano hire. It’s a beauty alright: ideal for weddings, parties or any gathering where the tinkling ivories can help to set the mood. Piano, of course, is such a versatile instrument that in the right hands it can go from the maddeningly ordered complexity of JS Bach through to a bumping blues jam, with a diversion into Chopsticks twee for good measure, and keep everyone entertained from your Nan to your baby nephew.

While on the subject of versatility, we should mention the Baby Grand comes loaded with 14 preset instruments/ voices, has 64 note polyphony (enabling you to play an astonishighly big chord) and 50 pre-set songs – so you don’t even need a pianist. If you happen to have one, with 88 full size & weighted keys, the instrument is realistic enough to keep even the virtuoso satisfied.

The same supplier is offering an upright digital piano for £150 a day. The Baby Grand will set you back £250 a day. Our verdict? Well worth it.

Photo credit: portableantiques http://www.flickr.com/photos/finds/3896005283/

Metal Detector hire is a popular choice with weekend trippers to the beach or the countryside, as you never know what you might find. Hiring a metal detector is great value for money. Available from as little as 12 pounds a day, a metal detector could just turn out to be the best investment you ever made.

Incidentally, metal detector hire is very popular on erento in summer time, when people tend to gather outdoors for parties and events. Inevitably, jewellery and other metal items get lost in gardens, on beaches and at festivals – the metal detector comes into its own recovering valuable gear, be it an engagement ring circa 2007 or a pot of Roman bronze, circa a very long time ago indeed.