If you are over two and under 60, then you probably don’t use talc. It’s tremendously unfashionable. Really it is. Like Lladro or tins of car sweets, which are not even ironic any more. Ear plugs — oddly — are rather fashionable. As is pneumonia (everyone’s at it), but talc? Not so much.
And yet most people nurse a secret tendresse for Johnson’s Baby Powder and I suppose one can either take the sensual tug of it to one’s shrink to be pulled apart, or just give in, grab a bottle and blank out on the sheer calming loveliness of the stuff.
You can use it as dry shampoo (better for blondes), you can dust it over eyelashes as a volumising mascara primer, shake it into trainers to deodorise, or you can use it as talc. Just talc. Simple as that.
I have started to employ a blizzard of the stuff every morning. Post-gym, hot shower and body oil, things can get a bit steamy in the dash to get out the door. But baby powder is so cooling and familiarly sweet-smelling that it calms you in the dusting, soothes you in the sprinkling. Aaaahh. Super-cheap at the price.
And if you are a clean freak like me, it makes you feel slinky and fresh all day. It is the enemy of clamminess, the assassin of stickiness. But careful if you are wearing black. Because that can be a bloody bore.
Johnson’s Baby Powder, £1.65 for 200g, at boots.com