Cosmonauts aboard the Russian space station, Mir, have taken on the role of super-salesmen - promoting pens, meteor fragments and even space suits to a television audience in the United States.

During a live link-up with a home shopping channel, QVC, the cosmonauts demonstrated an American-made pen designed to operate in zero gravity, and then showed viewers how they produced their own chocolate bars.

The main attraction came last .. a genuine cosmonaut space suit with only one previous owner -- yours for just twenty-five-thousand US dollars.

From the newsroom of the BBC World Service