So do we all need to sterilise our clothes now?

I don't often watch adverts on television - partly because life is too short to deal with a constant stream of corporate bull, and partly because I don't think today's ads match up to the crackers of my youth - the Flake girl, the Milk Tray Man, the Smash space aliens,  that kind of thing. Mostly, I am watching things that have been recorded so I can flick through them.

However, last night, I learned, courtesy of Vanish, that my clothes are all bacteria ridden because I wash them at too low a temperature and I need to buy their new product to kill off 99.9% of all germs so I'm nice and clean and safe.

Oh for goodness sake! I don't subscribe to the idea that your house needs to be some type of sterile environment. Mine never has been and actually Anna's probably had less childhood bugs and illnesses than many of her friends, so there might be something in my slovenly ways.

This sort of scaremongering marketing makes me angry. The people whose health is compromised by their environment are those who are living in houses or flats that are falling to bits, with damp, or are too cold, or too overcrowded. Those people are trapped by poverty and it's going to take a lot more than a tub of washing powder to improve their situation. Telling affluent people that their clothes are bug infested and that they need to do something about it is quite risible in my opinion.