You beauty! Clinique Anti-Blemish Solutions

Let’s slaughter an old wives’ tale: toothpaste doesn’t work on spots — even if you can leave it alone long enough to let it dry without smearing or resist the urge to pick the top off. And what if the doorbell rings when you are dotted with congealed Colgate? Awkward.

Then there’s another homespun pimple recipe: mush up an aspirin with a dot of water and paint the paste on. I actually think there’s something in this, but who has the time to concoct a witches’ brew before brekker?

The ruthlessly teen-marketed solutions (this will get you snogged, they promise, while more mature advertising tends to veer between this will get you laid and this will make you rich) are, as far as I can tell, reconstituted paint strippers, and high-end spot-blasters tend to be timid and often built into concealers as a kind of ineffective bonus point.

This new blemish fluid from Clinique works. You can shove it all over your face pre-moisturiser if you are having an out-of-control oil spill, but I dab it on threatening throbbings and it puts them firmly in their place without leaching all the good gunk out of my skin in the process.

I just reckon this is a really useful little number for all of us to have lying around. Just in case something… arises. Not that I’m calling you spotty or anything.

Clinique Anti-Blemish Solutions, £13, at allbeauty.com