Before the tribeswomen would show me the sweet smelling plant I wanted, they insisted I show my pubic hair!
As almost half of its UK shops close, an eye-popping recollection of a fortnight in the desert with the Body Shop’s ebullient late founder Anita Roddick
DARKNESS had descended on the desert and the ritual dance had begun. Vying to win a bride from among the chaste young women encircling them, a band of nomadic tribesmen contorted their vividly painted faces and cavorted to the beat of a cow-skin drum.
Lit by the flames of huge wood fires, and stars that stood out like gemstones in the cloudless black sky, it was a magical show. Yet the sahel region gets bitterly cold at night and the fierce wind spits sand in your eyes.
remembering that I would be sleeping under those huge stars for two weeks, without even the protection of a tent, soon had me longing for the comfort — and safety — of home.
not so anita roddick. Then Britain’s seventh-richest woman, The Body shop boss couldn’t have been more relaxed if she’d been lying on a massage table slathered in her fabled cocoa butter.
she fluttered her eyes so flirtatiously at the dancers that one of them felt sufficiently emboldened to inquire whether she, too, was available for marriage.
regrettably not, she told him. Handsome as he was, it might not go down too well with her husband, Gordon, who was waiting for her in a faraway place called Littlehampton.
Had she been less sensitive, she might have told her suitor, whose family possessions amounted to three skinny cows, some threadbare mattresses and a calabash, that she also had to run a global business empire, then valued at £600 million.
Memories of my unforgettable fortnight with roddick in 1990, in the wilds of niger, returned with last week’s news that The Body shop’s fortunes have slumped so alarmingly it has gone into administration. Only yesterday, it was announced that nearly half of its stores in the Uk will close with the loss of hundreds of jobs.
One wonders how the formidable green crusader, woke before the word was invented, might have reacted, had she lived to see the death of her dream.
It was a dream that began with a £4,000 bank loan and a few jars of aromatic goo, and — thanks to her dynamism — grew into a cosmetics giant with some 200 shops in the Uk, and 3,000 — including franchised stores — in more than 70 countries.
In 2006, just 18 months before she died, aged 64, from a brain haemorrhage, roddick sold The Body shop for £652 million.
FOR allowing it to fall into the hands of L’Oreal, one of the mainstream competitors whose supposedly less ethical production methods she frequently attacked, roddick — who was suffering from cirrhosis of the liver, caused by a blood transfusion given during childbirth — was accused of gross hypocrisy.
The brand has since changed hands twice more and is now owned by a German private equity company.
Perhaps, were she still with us, roddick would try to salvage her beloved baby with a buy-back offer. Having seen this force of nature operate at full throttle, I can’t imagine her sitting back and watching its possible disappearance from the High street.
The free- spirited methods roddick adopted to beat the beauty industry at its own game became evident when she invited me, a zealous young environment reporter, on that trip to niger.
Her intention was to track down the Wodaabe — a tribe from the deserts of niger and Chad — to discover the natural ingredients they use to enhance their looks: they are famed for their clear complexions and white teeth.
Travelling lightly, she would undertake these quests once or twice a year, having hit upon the idea for an alternative beauty shop during a holiday in the south Pacific, after seeing how Tahitian women used cocoa butter to preserve their skin.
as we ate bread baked in an oven buried under sand, she regaled me with some of her zanier escapades. Hunting for a natural perfume found in a remote area of Oman, she had met a group of women who shaved their heads and bodies because growing hair was taboo.
‘Before they would show me the plant that grew the scent, they said I must show them my pubic hair,’ she recalled. ‘so, I dropped my drawers while they stared at me and hooted with laughter.’
another search took roddick to Japan, where the aromatic plant she sought was used by female islanders with mirror-flat chests. Before handing it over to her, they wanted to squeeze her ample bosom. again, she obliged. anything for a new cream or lotion.
But her most bizarre encounter came in the backwoods of nepal, where a man she was negotiating with insisted on showing her the stunt for which he was renowned — wrapping eight bricks in a cloth and suspending them from his penis. she kept the photo as a souvenir.
Happily, the Wodaabe’s customs were less carnal, for theirs is a society that is, in many ways, ahead of its time. relations between the sexes are extremely formal; romance only begins after the women have picked a fiancé from the all-male beauty pageant known as the Guerewol.
They signalled their admiration of a man by sidling up behind him and scratching his back, then slipped away to cement their love under a blanket. Though roddick’s admirer was young enough to be her son, I’m sure he would have done likewise, given half a chance, for he followed her wherever she went.
Had she known her husband would later be exposed for having an affair with a woman around the age of their two daughters, perhaps she’d have shown more interest.
nonetheless, she was then in her 40s, and relished the attention, remaining at the increasingly raucous dance until the early hours.
But at dawn she was shaking me awake, full of energy. It was time to have our faces made up before meeting the tribe’s soothsayer, who would foretell our destiny.
In the following days we bought a cow for a family who had lost theirs in a drought; watched the most spectacular wedding ceremony I’ve seen; and helped to make yoghurt and grind maize.
In return, roddick showed the Wodaabe some wonders of the Western world, circa 1990. Her pocket mirror drew gasps, as did my sony Walkman player.
One night, when we were left alone by the tribe, she told me the intriguing story that later formed a plotline for her autobiography.
BOrnto wartime Italian immigrants who ran a cafe in Littlehampton, she confided that the man she’d always called ‘papa’ — her mum Gilda’s first husband — was not her biological father.
When she was 18, Gilda told her she and her brother, Bruno, were the products of an affair with another napoli emigre, Henry Perilli. after she divorced, her mother married Henry — ‘the love of her life’ — but he died just 18 months after the wedding.
‘When my mother told me the truth, everything that had gone before fell into place, and it was like a great weight had been lifted,’ roddick told me, as we sipped herbal tea beneath a full moon.
With her lectures on everything from Third World poverty to saving the amazonian rainforests, and her insistence ( rather disingenuous, as it transpired) that The Body shop’s potions were environmentally and ethically superior to those of its rivals, roddick made many enemies.
Whether or not The Body shop survives, it will be remembered as the acceptable face of self-indulgence, allowing millions to clear their blemishes with a clear conscience — and forcing competitors to match its standards or face a full-throated roddicking.
For a cafe owner’s daughter from Littlehampton, that’s quite an achievement. all the more so given the undignified bodily inspections she endured as she searched for those elusive elixirs.
SARAH VINE IS AWAY