Colour me bad

“Trust me, I’ve been there,” says Zoe Williams

I can't put an exact date on it, but I think it was June, 1998 that it became compulsory to have a fake tan before you went on holiday. Up to that date, the custom was to arrive as white as lard only somewhat less firm, sit on a beach until you were burnt to the extent that you no longer cared what you looked like, and then apply some fake tan. The methods were primitive – you did it yourself for a start, no booths, no fragrant ladies in latex gloves – and the results were mixed, especially when applied over existing sunburn, but hell. That was the English way. If we wanted to look bronzed, perfect, even succulent, with sizzling thighs like that lovely sausage advert of yesteryear, we would be French people.

So anyway, all that changed – I don’t know why, but I vividly remember the arrival of the St Tropez salon tan, and suddenly, even if you were just going away with your friend from university, for whom previously the most effort you’d ever made was to shave the bottom half of one of your legs, even for her you would arrive at Stansted proper-faked.

For the first two days of a fake tan, you look more like a cross between a host of Eurovision and a burns victim. All the while, you’re thinking “No, no… I am not streaky and unnerving. I am merely a different colour to the one I’m used to.” Furtive stares from other passengers tell you a different – and truer – story. Hosties don’t stare because they’ve seen it all before, not because they think you look normal.

Depending on your administrative skills, there is also a strong chance that you smell of chemicals. Don’t underestimate the non-organic reactions it requires for a not-brown potion to turn your body brown.

I had a friend who went straight from a fake bake to see her sister with a newborn in hospital, and the mother spent the rest of the day on the phone to NHS Direct. “I’ve let my feckless, streaky sister hold my baby. Will the fake tan rub off? I kissed her: will it get into my breast milk?” Sure, factor in that mothers are mad. But this is still a much more major operation than a pedicure, and even those smell pretty strong.

Still, you would endure the smells, the sights, the taunts… all to look 5% less English as you skipped towards the sea shore. You would possibly even keep your mouth shut for the first hour, just to reinforce this impression that perhaps you weren’t Anglo-Saxon, perhaps you were from Normandy.

Then, splash. One sea-dip and it’s all over. You’re back to your original colour, apart from a weird patch on each knee. Naturally, my question is, if all this started in 1998, when are we going to learn?