Like so many men, I’ve made a terrible job of looking after my skin. Born in 1963, I grew up at a time when every pasty white Briton wanted to be tanned, and the darker the better. It suggested you’d been abroad, when travel was expensive and therefore glamorous. Sure, you could buy Coppertone or Ambre Solaire – but it didn’t offer much protection even if you used it. The term SPF, or sun protection factor, was introduced in 1974, but I don’t think I heard it for another 10 years, by which time I had been burned more times than you could count.
And that set the pattern for most of my life. However fierce the sun, slapping on sunscreen, or even wearing a baseball cap, felt like too much of a faff, or too late, or both. I’ve grown a little more sensible since I met a woman who takes care of her own skin and that of her kids. But even now, I use about a tenth as much as sunscreen as they do.
