Moral superiority in cheap plastic bottles

As the train trundled down to Littlehampton one warm summer afternoon in 1988, I was filled with excitement at the thought of meeting Anita Roddick. I had arranged to interview her for a book called The New Tycoons, which I was writing with my Sunday Times colleague John Jay, now my husband. Roddick was already a household name even though the Body Shop had only been in existence for 12 years. When its shares were floated on the Unlisted Securities Market in 1984 they nearly doubled from 95p to 160p on the first day — and she became Britain’s fourth richest woman. Her shops, painted dark green and selling intriguing plastic bottles of unguents purporting to be made from natural ingredients, had hit the spot with women who were bored witless by the staid, overpriced offerings of Boots and the department stores.

Since the first shop opened in 1976, the tousle-haired mistress of the contentious soundbite had made herself better known among the general public than any of the other ten subjects of the book.