I smell. I know I do. I can’t help it. I have spent the last week head to toe smothered in Vicks vapour rub.

Other vapour rubs are available, I presume, I’m no expert in the ‘vapour rub’ industry.

It is of course pungent stuff.

It normally evokes an immediate response to anyone you meet.

As you approach, the nose wrinkles, the eyes narrow, and a gentle subconscious sniff starts.

I normally start the conversation with an explanation about why I have invaded their nostrils.

It’s part excuse, part cry for sympathy for my heavy head cold.

To be honest the vapour rub, which smells a bit like a mixture of the changing room at any Oxford rugby club and Martha Medleys Mental Menthol Menagerie, disguises my natural musk.

I have a strict but very time-conscious hygiene routine in the morning.

Look, when you have to be out of the house by 4 am at the latest, you’d look to cut a few corners too.

So I don’t spend hours on my hair, or shave. Or shower for that matter (for the record I shower last thing at night); I do however ensure the minimum hygiene requirements for public consumption are met.

I’ve never really understood the boom in market for men’s cosmetics.

Today it’s less about not taking two bottles in to the shower and more about ensuring that you’ve got your exfoliating clarifying moisturiser crème made with the seeds of the hohoa plant plucked from the virgin slopes of the Andes.

It’s a wonder there’s any room in the shower for anything other than bottles.

But like all things in life it’s about a happy medium.

So while I’m not sure that “guy liner” is acceptable I’m certain that what happened to me on the bus into the city centre last week isn’t right either.

There I was minding my own business, bus beginning to get busier.

The seat next to me remained empty despite the number free diminishing.

This I hasten to add is not to do with my odour, more to do with the fact that anyone sat next to me gets at best a third of their allotted seat, as my ample posterior crosses the border and invades the other seat.

Eventually along the Banbury Road a man got on who, after careful consideration, sat down next to me.

It took no longer than a second before the most sickening smell of the unwashed fell across me.

This was a well dressed man with a briefcase tapping furiously on his Blackberry, while casually emitting a natural smell so unappealing it curdled the milkshake of the school girl three rows in front.

Now, I’m not one for hyperbole, much, but I could see the stink lines normally reserved for cartoons emanating from him. How bad was this smell?

I got off the bus a full two stops early, deciding I’d prefer to walk (Yeah! I know. Me, walk!) than to suffer in polite silence.

Walk!