“What are you doing in there?” I asked my daughter who had been hogging the bathroom for an hour.

“I’ve got a spot,” she replied matter-of-factly.

This revelation sparked a frantic chain of events that included the appearance in the bathroom of various lotions and used cotton wool balls, an outing to Boots, and me attempting to squeeze the offending creature, which lay to the left of her nose.

Spots are every teenager’s nightmare. I clearly remember, all those years ago, the angst on waking up to find one. My friends and I would spend hours discussing ways to get rid of them.

Being gullible teens we succumbed to advertising in a big way and I remember believing that a bottle of Anne French cleansing milk was my passport to a smooth, spot-free complexion.

Predictably, it was not to be and throughout my teens I pursued various spot-clearing paths recommended by others, including rubbing vinegar and lemon juice on my face, blasting the blemishes for 15 minutes with a hair dryer and covering them with half a tub of talcum powder.

These efforts often made the spots look even more red and inflamed, so I’d waste another hour trying to camouflage them with my mum’s face powder.

What is most irritating about teenage spots – and this appears to apply universally – is that they always erupt the day before a special event. A first date, a party, a school disco, if an occasion on which you want to look your best is approaching, your pores fill up with more grime than a sack of coal. With hormones raging it can be quite distressing – one of my teenage pals would actually stay in if she had a pimple.

In a teenager’s eyes a spot is like an erupting volcano, visible for miles around. Teenagers imagine that everyone they meet homes in on them when, in fact, the only people who really take any notice are other spot-obsessed teenagers.

In my youth, ‘cures’ were limited to a couple of products. Now, entire aisles in the chemists are devoted to spot-blasting goods with gels, lotions, masks, soaps, pads and facial washes.

Having been less than satisfied with the lotion I bought for her, my daughter was convinced that others she had seen on TV would do the trick. But, horrified by the prices, I managed to convince her that a dab of vinegar and a handful of Johnson’s baby powder was the answer. Now she looks like a ghost and smells like a chip shop.