How To Be Beautiful: Blemish treatments

One unexpected benefit of passing from teenage years into adulthood is that, if you're lucky, 10 per cent of your brain is no longer wasted on the daily monitoring of spots. The period of grace before that same 10 per cent is diverted to wrinkle-watch may be woefully brief, but since lines progress imperceptibly, it's impossible to maintain a vigil of the same intensity.

Most galling, then, are those occasions in adult life when you're also forced to contend with a sudden adolescent-style breakout. It's in the natural order of things that this will occur just before a big event, worst-case scenario being the job interview.

But where once a smear of toothpaste might have had to suffice, there are now plenty of targeted products designed to speed up the healing process. Best of all, some of them – given 24 hours – really work. Would that there were similarly speedy fixes for wrinkles.