Guaranteed Irish: Tan Organic

You know about Tan Organic: the brand is a Dragons Den success story and if you combine that TV gold with a recent Late Late Show appearance then you've got a product any tan-fan wants to get their hands on.

You also know if you read regularly that I am not a fan of fake tan. At all.

So, I didn't expect all that much from the meeting I had with the brand's founder, Noelle O'Connor, last Friday.

Fake tan, yadda yadda, ten a penny, all the same. Yeah?

Except actually, it turns out that Tan Organic is doing things differently enough to make me sit up and take an interest. While we've had a couple of products claiming organic status before in the tanning sector, this is genuinely organic - certification is in-coming as I type - and contains nothing petroleum-based, artificial or synthetic. Good news for naturals fans who like to fake it, I reckon.

It also does things quite differently in a few other ways:

Number one is that Tan Organic uses a base of aloe vera juice where most products use plain water. That's what piqued my interest first, actually, because that aloe base makes it kinder to skin  - although Noelle warns it'll also add a couple of minutes to the drying time. So, you'll get some moisturising benefits to begin with and there's also hyaluronic acid in there, which is a molecule you frequently find in face creams as it's brilliant at holding many times its own weight in water.

Number two is that it was developed by a pale-skinned Irish redhead for other equally pale skinned Irish lasses, so we've - fingers crossed - finally got a product that'll work with our never-seen-the-sun skin. There is only one retail shade available - caramel. In-salon, you'll be able to get a darker version, chocolate, too.

Number three? The tan comes in a glass vial with a cork stopper, so packaging is 100% recyclable.

Number four: it's Irish.

Rolling out into pharmacy now, you can already buy at salons nationwide for €29.99 - full stockist information is on their website. Have any of you tried it? What did you think?

UPDATE: The bottle cap has now been changed. A pic here: http://twitpic.com/2qy0pz