I spent most of my teenage years smelling like a human fruit salad

BACK in the early 1980s, heading into town on a Saturday was a weekly ritual for me and my teenage school friends. Rarely with more than a fiver in our purses, we’d hit Our Price to buy a Top 40 single before making a beeline for The Body Shop.

The Brighton branch was the first to open in the UK in 1976. By the time I was a regular about five years later, it was heaving.

Most Saturdays we’d have to queue to get in. It would have been inconceivable to us then that one day it would go bust for lack of customers.

Breathing in the sweet smell and gawping at the brightly coloured products, we felt as though we’d entered the bathroom smellies equivalent of Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory. Way before ‘pampering’ and ‘self-care’ became a thing, The Body Shop was a revelation.

Yes, we had Boots and make-up concessions in department stores, but they were far too grown-up and intimidating for 14-year-olds.

In contrast, The Body Shop was cool, buzzy and exciting. There were testers everywhere and the staff didn’t glare at us when we plastered ourselves in White Musk eau de toilette, sniffed the cucumber skin cleanser or dug our fingers into the kiwi lip balm.

It was the fruit-scented products I was obsessed with. I’d stock up on pink grapefruit shower gel, fuzzy peach body spray, green apple bubble bath and banana shampoo and conditioner. It was thanks to The Body Shop that I spent most of my teenage years smelling like a human fruit salad.

The brand was the first to cleverly market the gift basket. Not only was it what every teenage girl wanted for her birthday or Christmas, it was also a lifesaver for men who no longer had to fret about what to buy their wives and girlfriends.

Thanks to those baskets, we were able to host regular ‘swap’ parties where we’d trade unwanted and duplicate products.

It was always a big win if I could offload a loofah (every gift basket seemed to come with a rock-hard one that no one was quite sure what to do with) in return for some Japanese ‘washing grains’, which turned to a paste when you mixed them with water. They were too strong for my youthful skin, but I didn’t care because they looked and sounded so glamorous.

By the time we had hit our 20s and mustered the confidence to stand up to the frosty, orange-faced assistants at department store make-up counters, The Body Shop seemed old hat and unsophisticated.

But, it was still a big part of my youth, and its demise makes me feel nostalgic for all those multi-coloured bottles that used to sit on my bathroom shelf. It really was part of my generation’s (fruit) salad days.