overloading electrical sockets ??

Personally, I would say you should never daisy chain adapters or extensions. I like the idea of those leads with proprietary small plugs on them, to save space. Standard 6 way (or more) adapters are good for AV, too, if you don't fancy rewiring your cables.

Christian.

I'd get something like this

I have two 10way Maplin extension leads behind my AV "pile" each one to a socket of a double socket. Also arranged so I just switch one off when I go on holiday so as to leave my TiVo, set top box and other networking equipment powered up, but turn off the rest of the gear.

You are unlikely to be drawing much power with AV kit, so overloading is not usually an issue. However as you say it gets messy. You also need to take care when you cascade extensions leads etc since it can cause the earth fault loop impedance to rise which will affect the safety (i.e. disconnect time and fire risk) in the event of a fault.

I prefer using short multiway extension leads over "adaptors" which always look really ugly and tend to risk being pulled out of the socket all the time. If you must cascade things then don't daisy chain them, do a fan out. e.g. if you need 16 sockets you are better off with one four way extension feeding four others, rather than a great long chain of four way extensions each feeding three appliances and the next extension.

Looks good - thanks

or even better.. a quick ebay has given me a 10way upright connector - should be easier to tuck in behind my cabinet

Overloading is not a problem, unless you find you are baking in your room with 8kW or so of load. One thing I would suggest is just to use one socket of the double for the A/V stuff and leave one socket free in case you ever do want to plug in a heater, kettle or toaster. From a load pint of view cubes are fine as they are fused but the weight of connected cables may make them pull out partially which is not good. Don't worry about the loading, the 13A fuse in the first plug top looks after that. If you are really worried fit 3A fuses in the secondary blocks which is more than enough for 4 items of A/V gear.

Jim A