THANK GOD IT'S FAVOURITES: Lush Bubble Bars

Bubble baths are really important.

On a day-to-day basis, showers are a million times faster and more convenient in terms of actually getting clean, but bubble baths are important for the soul. Because my skin is really sensitive, I have to be a bit careful of the products I use, especially in a bath where you’re sitting in them for a long time, but something I can rely on not to irritate and that I reach for again and again is Lush Bubble Bars.

They’re just great. Shown here is The Comforter (£4.75), which smells like Ribena and will turn your bathwater pink, but there is a huge selection of colours, scents and sizes ranging in price from £2.75 to around a fiver. Another particular favourite of mine is Creamy Candy, which smells like bubblegum, and I am super excited to try the Christmas Hedgehog and Penguin, because they might be the cutest things I’ve ever seen.

The bars are solid, and you crumble them under the tap to create the bubbles, so you can use as much or as little of the bar as you want (I tend to use half of the bigger ones and all of the smaller ones). The bubbles they create are brilliant – in the picture, that’s just a couple of minutes after I put it in the water, but eventually you’ll get proper Pretty Woman film star bubbles. I made a Santa beard and everything. It was excellent.

Apart from my extreme relief that my skin doesn’t react to bubble bars, each one has slightly different ingredients that also offer treatment to the skin, so they really do go above and beyond the call of bubbly duty. Creamy Candy, the first one I ever tried and the one that got me hooked, contains cocoa butter and almond oil, so it’s extra moisturising, and The Comforter’s got bergamot oil in it (which is super cleansing and calming for irritated skin), so if you’ve got a particular skin worry, you can fix it with a bath that’s soothing for you and your skin. Magic!

It’s getting colder now, and although I am strongly of the opinion that bubble baths should be a year-round activity, there’s definitely something appealing about disappearing under bright pink water and a mound of bubbles whenever you’ve got a spare hour. Bubble bars will help you do that.

I’m determined to try out every single different one – if there’s any you’ve tried that you think I should go for next, let me know! I’ve still got half The Comforter left and there’s no one in the house right now so I’m going to go make use of that. It’s for, you know, research. I can stop any time I want. I swear.