Two shops. Two philosophies. Which side are you on?

Are you Lush or are you Aldi? Me, I’m Aldi all the way. So much so that when someone — usually my daughter — tries to drag me anywhere near one of Lush’s painfully ubiquitous high street cosmetics shops, I respond a bit like the Antichrist does in the ‘it’s just a church, Damien’ scene in The Omen, writhing and shrieking like I’m about to be dissolved in acid. (Which, funnily enough, is rather how my skin feels when I’ve treated myself to one of Lush’s fizzing bath bombs)

Not, it must be said, that there is anything remotely Antichrist-like about hating Lush. On the contrary, it is the perfectly natural response of any civilised, intelligent, moral human being. What’s wrong with Lush? Everything is wrong with Lush, but in a nutshell, it’s this: that it’s not so much a shop as a marketing trick; a candy-coloured, berry-scented, personally gift-wrapped exercise in organic, ethnically sourced, fair-trade turd-polishing.

If Lush were a circus, it would be touchy-feely, painfully right-on and thrill-free Cirque Du Soleil. If it were a movie, it would be something like that overstyled, hyper-whimsical Wes Anderson picture The Grand Budapest Hotel. If Lush were a Mr Benn episode, it would be the spaceman one where he goes to another planet and picks up lots of jewels only to discover on bringing them back to Festive Road that they’re all just rocks.

You go in and it’s all so seemingly enticing: the handwritten-esque labels done in the overexcitable decorative style of girls called Bekki who draw a circle over the ‘i’ instead of a dot; the gaudy chunks of rippled soap which look and smell more delicious than cake; the hovering assistants who want to be like your bestest friend ever and make you feel so thrilled and validated by your purchase that it’s like you’ve got a new boyfriend, a pony and an Anya Hindmarch bag rolled into one.