Dan Morris: Team Tan back in the saddle

​I’m talking sun cream, of course, but considering the cascade of heatwaves we’ve already had this year, the time to start protecting our skin has long since passed.

Now though, as many of us get set to jet set on that well-earned family break abroad, it’s time to stock up on lotions and potions in earnest, and save our epidermis from a good ol’ grillin’.

I try to take the sun seriously these days, having heard far too many terribly tragic stories about the effects of UV rays over the last few years.

When I was a younger chap though, I couldn’t have cared less, and, in fact, ritualistically sought out to give my body the best barbecuing I could.

In this I was inspired by my mother – a lady who considered factor 2 sun lotion and a glass of summer fruits Oasis and vodka as the twin pillars of a perfect holiday.

Thanks to her father’s mainland European heritage, my mum was blessed with skin that never burned and tanned obnoxiously beautifully within hours. 

As such, she was never one to embrace the factor 50, and I’m sure will now be turning in her grave at the thought of it.

Sired from the same gene pool, yet spliced with my own father’s far fairer complexion, I’ve always been able to cultivate a decent enough tan, but nothing in comparison to Momma Bear. However, God loves a trier, and he who dares, wins…

During what I might call my ‘Magaluf heyday’, it has to be said that I was pretty darn vain, and devoted far too much time to making sure I was ‘primed to peacock’ while on holiday. 

This never went as far as any pre-tour sunbed sessions, but did involve excessive gym and garden sunbathing regimens before I flew away with my pals on our latest Club 18-30 excursion.

In this, I was joined by my best pal in life – a kindred spirit of shameless self-promotion who also liked to look his bright, bronze best before he’d even boarded the plane.

In advance of one particular lads’ jolly, our burgeoning tans were not quite cutting as much mustard as we would have liked, and with only a week to go until we would be strutting our stuff on the strips of Majorca, it was time to bring in the big guns.

After smacking us both around the head for being ‘a pair of t***s’, Mum’s advice turned out to be very straightforward. 

It turned out that one of the secrets to her sun-kissed success over the years had been a cheeky, bottled tanning oil made by a well-known sun lotion manufacturer.

It wasn’t fake tan, she explained, but more of an ‘accelerant’ that might help the sun along in turning us into a, how did she put it, ‘set of Chanel clutches’.

Dubious but excited, we lathered up with ruthless abandon. The results were interesting…

While thankfully we didn’t end up looking like Ross from Friends à la ‘four twos’, after a couple of hours in the sun our secret weapon had started to take effect.

The trouble was that during our basking, the scent of it had also made us quite popular with the local insect life.

The biteshad been dished out liberally, to the extent that our new tans were quite gloriously punctuated with a variety of red blemishes. 

Where we had begun the day as a duo of Victoria Sponges, we now resembled a couple of lightly-charred fruit cakes.

Once our insect kisses had subsided, we were shamelessly chuffed with the results, but a little dismayed when we finally boarded the plane to Magaluf only to hear the ‘Not-Quite-Armani Army’ that made up the rest of the flight bragging about how they’d been slathering the same stuff on for well over a fortnight.

So much for being the cocks of the walk – we were still destined to be the palest pilgrims of Team Tan.

Nowadays, with more silver chest hair than Ted Danson, I’m less concerned with bronzing my bod and more enamoured with the anti-ageing effects of keeping out of the sun altogether.

But, boys will be boys, and this somewhat effete pursuit from yesteryear was a right old giggle in a time full of right old giggles.

I’ve still got a bottle of Momma’s mahogany magic in the cupboard, and maybe this summer, in tribute to the great lady that was, I’ll wheel it out for a spin. The trick, of course, will be to go gently. Ross ended up with ‘eight twos’ after all…