Be Excellent To Each Other

The thought occurs - rather than buying lots of plug adapters for use in Europe, could you just buy one and use it with a 4-gang/6-gang UK extension lead?

Yup.

That said, I just take a euro figure-8 cable for the laptop and that charges everything else via USB...

Yes you can - I've done that quite often. You could even cut off the UK plug and put a continental one on, then you don't need to carry the adapter. Of course it's then not so useful in the UK but those multi-gang leads are cheap as chips anyway.

I've got one of them plugged into the wall on an australian adaptor, with european one off it and 3 UK ones.
The only problem is if you're not just travelling everything is stuck in the same corner of the room.

Coolio. Didn't know whether it oils potentially cause problems overloading a single socket or something, from what I remember continental wiring systems aren't as robust as ours?

Ta.

It's different - they use a radial system instead of ring.

Are you planning to overload it? Unless you intend on running a fan heater, toastie maker and hair straightener etc off it non-stop, I doubt you'll have any problems.

Anyway, one advantage of the European wiring is that even if you do something daft from a UK perspective like cutting off the 13A fused plug and putting a non-fused one on, you're protected by a 16A circuit breaker in most cases.