Diet pills, patches, teas or sprays: all a big con

The excellent Channel 4 programme "Cook Yourself Slim" has, every week, exposed a dieting product as being useless. It's been gratifying to see slimming patches, a slimming spray and slimming tea (apparently used by Posh Spice) revealed as rubbish. They always run the legend "this does not constitute a clinical trial," but have you ever noticed how few of these products ever go through proper clinical trials? They don't because the results would be so bad no-one would buy the product. We do, however, swallow whatever hype they throw at us, because we're all looking for a quick fix to lose weight.

I recently tried, against my better judgment, a new slimming pill called TrimSecrets. Michelle Mone from Ultimo is their testimonial customer and I suspect she is also co-marketing the product, because I receive emails "from the desk of Michelle Mone," as you do for Ultimo.

So, what's in a TrimSecret? Well, the dinky tin contains a calorie controlled diet sheet. It's a sensible diet. You're encouraged to drink a lot of water and exercise. All good. Then you're supposed to take one of the capsules three times a day.

The capsules, we're told, contain only natural ingredients, and looking at the list, most of the ingredients have been associated with speeding up the metabolism: green tea, vitamin C, chromium for example. There is also caffeine and guarana extract, both stimulants.

In the first week of using TrimSecrets I lost 3 pounds, which was good but not surprising because I was very enthusiastic about my new regime and exercised a lot. The second week it went down to two pounds and the third, one pound, which was a rate of loss of I would have expected without using the pills.

Unfortunately though the pills had side effects for me. Nobody mentions side effects among the glowing testimonials on the TrimSecrets website. But the stimulants meant I couldn't sleep, so I had to take the third pill much earlier in the day; and I started feeling generally nauseous (the caffeine) and quite low. As soon as I stopped taking the pills, these side effects eased.

I have tried herbal slimming tablets in the past - Zotrim comes to mind - but in my experience, they're useless and no substitute for a low calorie nutritious diet, exercise and willpower. Sadly.

The same goes for all the "miracle" treatments you can have at the beauticians which claim to reduce your weight by pounds, a dress size and so on. I mentioned one of them on this site, Universal Contour Wrap. There are many others, and watching "Silicone Chicks" on Discovery Health, you see how gullible women are. An overweight woman tried a treatment which, she was told, would reduce her measurements by an inch in three weeks. She had lots of treatments at around £40 a time I think it was, and did lose a couple of inches, but she was also using a personal trainer and so that's how she lost that weight. I expect the treatments gave her nothing more than smoother skin and a damaged bank balance.

My advice would be to spend the money on a personal trainer or, failing that, some delicious food that will indulge you as you diet - seafood, turbot or steak.

A Perfume Odyssey

I probably buy two or three perfumes a year. Yesterday I bought Bluebell by Penhaligon. It's a one note perfume, the sweet nostalgic smell of bluebells. I love most of Penhaligon's perfumes particularly Malabah and Violette, which always reminds me of my gran (although she wore Yardley's April Violets).

I'm never tempted by the big splashy perfume launches these days, and I would never buy a "celebrity" scent. All I smell there is something fishy, as celebrities lend their image to some putrid smelling cat's pee in a bid to make a fast buck. They're never going to be remembered scents.

My first ever perfume was Yardley Sea Jade when I was about 12. Next I was given Dorothy Gray's Midnight one Christmas, but I didn't care for it much. I think my mum was harking back to her own youth when she got it for me. Pretty Peach by Avon was marketed at young ladies but I didn't like it: I considered myself too grown up! A girl I knew vaguely, who had a bit of a lisp, is called to this day "Pretty Peach Ruth" by my mum and me, because she confided that she had some Pretty Peach hand cream! My mum was an Avon lady so I had exposure to a lot of Avon's perfumes at that time, Elegance, Somewhere, Topaz, Occur! Here Is My Heart, Elusive and Moonwind.

Next in my perfume odyssey came Aqua Manda or was it Kiku? One of those Faberge perfumes that were all the rage in the early 70s. The big one for me was Charlie, a real breakthrough perfume in all respects. It was different, it was confident and it epitomised a new type of young woman.

I was getting a regular kit from the Universal Beauty Club, a motley collection of perfumes and cosmetics, mostly by companies you'd never heard of. My mum was thrilled when a bottle of Californian Poppy was among the haul, but boy did it smell of cat's pee.

In my 20s I would succumb to marketing hype and occasionally buy brand new perfumes: Vivienne Westwood's Boudoir, Estee Lauder's Knowing, Byzance by Rochas. There was many perfumes I flirted with but didn't really love: Cinnabar (I liked it but it was not really me), Cabotine de Gres, Magie, Lumiere, Joy, L'eau d'Issey and very briefly Giorgio Beverley Hills (but everybody else wore it).

My second "breakthrough" scent was Diorella by Dior, originally launched in 1972 as one of the new generation of chypre perfumes. I first smelt it on a friend I'd met on a women's management course, and I couldn't resist buying it (even though perfumes often smell differently on other people). I still love Diorella and have a few drops of eau de parfum left, saving for very special occasions, because Dior only make it now in eau de toilette.

I first wore Diorella back in 1989 so there have been a few perfumes since then, among them Dioressence, Chanel 19, Chanel no 5, Cristalle, Miss Dior Cherie and Aromatics Elixir. All passing flirtations however.

Some perfumes are so evocative they instantly remind me of someone who wears them. My mother used to wear Alliage and Elizabeth Arden's Memoire Cherie (no longer available), and I can still remember how they smelt. I combed the web to find Memoire Cherie and eventually found an original soap, in America, which I bought for around five dollars. But my mum admitted later she'd gone off it. And I doubt if I could wear Charlie now.

My sister-in-law Sarah has worn many scents but to me, Cinnabar is the one that reminds me of her. One of my best friends Julie is synonymous with Opium.

There are some perfumes I truly detest: Youth Dew, Shalimar, Poison, Mitsouko, Tresor, anything with roses (I don't believe you can capture the smell of roses in scent) and the latest vogue of scents that all smell the same - the Britney / J Lo / whoever fragrances.

My belief is that the market for heritage and long forgotten perfumes, plus made-to-measure scent, will become huge as women of my age and older decide they want to have a unique wardrobe of perfumes rather than the same old scents churned out by the global perfumiers.