Anthea McTeirnanadmits to dabbling in celebrity scents, although she's not sure if the men in her life have noticed
This has been a bumper week for the boys in my house. Britney got up and saw to the Sunday roast. Paris rustled up the tea on Monday. J-Lo went to work on Wednesday. On Thursday the Education Editor was delighted to have Kylie laying out his pages. Yesterday Kate Moss did the Hoovering. And this morning Victoria Beckham is going shopping (Dunnes, not Dior, darling).
Welcome to the fantasy-fragrance revolution. Now you can sit on the sofa, reading about Coleen McLoughlin's new hairdo in Heat while emitting the sort of low-level pong that will have Wayne Rooney beating a path to your door as soon as Sir Alex releases him from training.
Celebrity scents have gone large. Sales in the UK have leaped by 2,000 per cent since 2004. Last year perfume sales there were worth almost €850 million, and 40 per cent of those were of the celebrity variety. A quick trawl of our own fragrance emporia - aka pharmacies and supermarkets, where most of us pick up our unguents - reveals a similar story. The shelves are bowed by a Christmas deluge of celebrity box sets ready for dispensing to female relations.
Sad to say I have been ahead of the posse. I'm on my second bottle of Curious by Britney Spears. I like it. Unfortunately, nobody else seems to. Just because you have your kids taken away, shave your head, turn your back on underwear and get twisted the odd time - Britney, not me - there's no reason for one of the State's largest retail pharmacies to put the boots in by selling your scent off at half price (get it now, girls). Surely Brit has suffered enough.
Worse things could have happened. I was just about to invest in an ironic bottle of Shh . . . by Jade Goody when, blow me down, she came over all BNP on Celebrity Big Brother. Racism is never a good smell. I made my protest by refusing to buy. The major retailers made their protest by refusing to sell it. The victim of Goody's racism, Shilpa Shetty, made her own postmodern protest by . . . releasing her own celebrity perfume. You go, girl.
Of course the reasons for our smelly obsession with assorted singers, actresses, Wags and glamour models are complex. OK, they're not. They're selling a lifestyle. We're smelling a lifestyle. It's not that new, really. But the latest offerings sure make sense to me. After all, who wants to smell like a dead Frenchwoman (Coco by Chanel) when you can smell like a tiny Antipodean pop princess (Sweet Darling by Kylie)?
Overanalysis is the curse of happiness. Just remember that when you are perusing the following expert opinion of Britney's Curious. Roja Dove, one of the world's best-known perfumers, gave the following analysis of the Louisiana girl's offering: "To me, it smells like a smell, not a perfume. It is thin, fruity and floral. For me it is an odour that has very little personality. It is taking safe to an extreme level." And your problem is . . .
For God's sake, one of the paybacks for being a lady (and I use that term advisedly) is that to compensate you for your reduced earning capacity, and sidetrack you from ripping off your brassiere and igniting it in a public place, you are allowed to dabble in the superficial.
In my own quest to replace Curious as my signature smell I have been utilising the kind services of pharmacies by testing out a different celebrity perfume each lunchtime.
Christmas is coming, 2008 approaches and my lovely partner deserves a new woman with a new smell. He shall have one (together with a handy gift-buying hint). Next year I shall smell of Stunning by Katie Price. I wonder what Dove will make of that.
THIS CHRISTMAS WE'RE RECOMMENDING . . .
Unforgettable by Bertie Ahern
RRP £8,000/$15,100
Rehab by Amy Winehouse
RRP €80 a gram
Près de Paris by Michael O'Leary
RRP 1c plus taxes and charges
Vol au Vent by Kerry Katona
RRP €1.99 (four-pack). Exclusive to Iceland
Geordan by Eddie O'Sullivan
Only for special occasions
Grandma by Stephen Ireland
For the mature woman