Mutton dressed as Madonna

If I look as good as Madonna when I'm 53, I will get on stage in Istanbul and bare my nipple like she did: that's a promise, it's now in writing.

I mean, I don't want those horrible veiny arms and I don't want to pretend to the nation that I stopped ageing in 1984, but otherwise, I'll take the body. Bits of it: the bum, for example. Maybe the stomach. She can keep the rest.

The answer to Madonna's dilemma – her unerring tendency to wear clothes which would make a teenager look like mutton dressed as lamb – may well be found in a bottle of Ageless Fantasy, an anti-ageing perfume which is said to knock at least eight years off your age.

Scientists have concluded that the scent of pink grapefruit on a woman can give her an impression of youth. Just imagine how young people would think you were if you hollowed out three or four and wore them as a citrus bikini and a jaunty hat.

Men associate certain scents with certain ages and can be fooled into thinking women are younger if they detect a 'youthful scent' around them.

Women are harder to trick: we associate the 'youthful scent' of a younger man with Lynx-in-lieu-of-bathing, the aroma of wet trainers, four-days-on school shirts and egg-sandwich flecked bum fluff.

Even given the superior olfactory know-how of women, the only way I can imagine Ageless Fantasy working is if you spray your date in the eyes with it as soon as he arrives to pick you up.

Then it's a simple case of watching your man until the blinding effect starts to wear off at which point you can give it to him with both barrels with as many blasts as it takes for him to agree that you look like you're 22. Because I have a magic portrait ageing on my behalf in the attic (I'm 76) I don't need gimmicks or trinkets to help me look any younger or more desirable and any persistent lurking around the tropical fruit section at supermarkets is, I promise, purely coincidental.