Fortunately, the use of the word “metrosexual” seems to have abated. As has “at the end of the day” and “to be honest”. Truly someone out there deserves a nobel prize, because at one stage I was no longer able to survive in the world without my trusty noise-cancelling headphones to blot out these verbal tics. I can’t help but notice it’s coincided with David Beckham leaving the country.

I digress. On a recent trip to the states I got a free Clinque washbag with the purchase of some booze, and it included little travel sized shaving gel, aftershave, facewash, and an eye cream. Having endured many hours at the cosmetics counter with my mum during childhood, I’ve always been rather cynical about the whole thing. A slightly orange air-hostess who’s been hit with a makeup shotgun, making vague allusions to pores, proteins, and alpha-ceramide, whatever that is. So, putting a dab of the oily goop on the normally purple bits under my eyes, I was expecting absolutely nothing to happen. So imagine my surprise when throughout the day, I didn’t look quite so knackered! Now the downside is that if you rub your eyes this goop kind of accumulates a bit like PVA glue and you have to get it all off otherwise you look like you’re melting.

But it got me thinking… If I was going to flog this, I’d actually go out there and do a study with it. “Cream X reduces perceived level of hangover by 12%” or something. And then I’d write it up somewhere and publish it. No alpha-ceramide or Pro-V needed! So why aren’t the cosmetics companies doing this? Go head-to-head between competitors and let effectiveness determine price, not stupid made up words. After all, the star ratings given in magazines are presumably either a.) methodologically rather unreliable or b.) paid for by whoever gets the highest score (either directly or indirectly).

Is it that they don’t want to? Is it that once the spangly pseudoscience is brushed off, these things would be a commodity item and you wouldn’t be able to inflate the prices? Well at least where men are concerned, it doesn’t appear that the spangles are working all that well.