THE secret of human sexual attraction has been solved and scientists have found a way to bottle sex appeal. Professor George Dodd of Warwick University has developed The Pheromone Factor, a synthetic version of the chemicals (pheromones) secreted by the body to attract others. Your pheromone-enhanced smell, he claims, will hook a sexual partner by acting on his subconscious.

The Pheromone Factor (TPF) comes in a nasty 15ml plastic bottle and at £29.99 plus £3 P&P costs roughly the same as a bottle of Bollinger Grande Annee. Since TPF smells like hair spray, Bollinger seems the more likely aphrodisiac.

‘The formulation will not automatically put people under your spell,’ says the blurb on the bottle of sexual success. ‘But it will kindle any sparks of attraction that may be present. It is urged that you use it responsibly.’ The instructions tell me to add 10 drops of TPF to 30ml of my own favourite fragrance. Chanel 19 only comes in 50ml bottles, so I have to add 16.6 drops. I plough on with enthusiasm because I know from women’s magazines that I need sex to stay trim and keep my wrinkles at bay. Then I go to Harrods to enhance my own sexuality, stimulate sexual responses and improve my chances of finding a partner. After all, this is the hot spot where Richard Gere was kissed by Miss UK Amanda Johnson before he ventured into the bed department where a brass bed almost collapsed under the weight of females trying to get near the greying heart throb. I’m wearing office purdah – my body covered from high necked jumper to ankles – so it won’t be my tantalising clothes that pull the men. But they will sniff and be uncontrollably drawn to me. No male shopper will be safe. Before the eyes of the startled throng, I’ll be passionately entwined. I hose myself with Chanel 19 and TPF in the Harrods perfumerie then stand and wait. It’s mostly women in there and there’s more than a smell of hormones in this sales rush. Modern standards of hygiene mean that normally I disguise my natural body odours and sexual pheromones. But now I’ve replaced mine, I can sense the hordes of ravenous males herding in my direction.

I stand and I wait. And still I stand and wait. Researchers think an organ in the nose specialises in sexual smells. When you lose your sense of smell, your libido nosedives. I presume the men in the perfumerie have lost their sense of smell.

I go to the food halls. The scents in TPF each have an almost exact molecular counterpart in classic aphrodisiac foods. Dodd’s ingredients include oysters to caviar, ripe stilton and champagne – but they are all subliminal, so I don’t smell like a larder. En route a man starts to flash at me. But it’s only a Harrods model policeman with his flashing light. I WAFT expectantly by a row of men in the delicatessen who remain with their backs firmly planted to my face. A man at the fish bar tells me I smell too floral – but only after some prompting and my burying his nose in my brain. I’d have more success if I buried my head in a bowl of oysters. I go upstairs where in desperation I sit on a brass bed. I move a male customer’s bag in order to sit. ‘Do you want to buy it?’ he asks, snappily. ‘I work for the Evening Standard and I’m wearing sex pheromones,’ I tell him. ‘I smell nothing,’ he replies, walking off.

I call the chairman Mohammed Al Fayed to ask if he’d like to smell me. I’m assured he’d have been charmed but he’s out.

Back in the street the Harrods head doorman treats me courteously. He’s been there for donkey’s years and never sniffed a customer before. But even a green man isn’t turned on.

Suddenly two stallions loom into view. Pauke and Vechter, the 16-hand Harrods horses. Pauke, six years old, is a toyboy and shows great interest in me.

But it turns out to be the smell of mints that he’s pursuing. TRACEY in Barkers’ perfume department already knew all about pheromones. ‘My mum sold a bottle in her boutique in Reading to the man from the martial arts shop next door,’ she confided. So did it work? ‘I don’t think he got any girls,’ she said, ‘but his dog jumped on him.’ He should have read the small print – it warns that The Pheromone Factor is ‘not tested on animals’.

I was hoping for better luck as I mixed the required number of drops of my neutral-smelling colourless pheromone liquid with Obsession For Men eau de toilette – Tracey’s personal recommendation as the sexiest male scent – and splashed it on. Tracey somehow managed to restrain herself and I strode out into the streets of Kensington, confident that women’s heads would turn wherever I went and mindful of the warning on the bottle to ‘act responsibly’.

No one on the street seemed to notice that they were walking past a sex god. I hailed a cab and headed for an appointment at a Mayfair hotel. My taxi driver, who was a man, managed to keep his eyes on the road and his hands on the wheel despite the overpowering whiff in the back of his cab. At the hotel my interviewee, the country singer John Denver, also managed to control himself, although there were occasions when he leaned towards me to emphasise certain points. We didn’t exchange numbers.

It was only as I was bidding farewell to the glamorous publicist that I got the first glimmer that the pheromones might be taking effect. She suddenly started talking about sex videos, apropos of nothing in particular, and I revealed my secret. Suddenly she looked very flustered: her cheeks went bright red, she clasped her hands to her face and stifled some laughter. For a moment it seemed as if it might be the start of a beautiful relationship. Then she explained the joke: ‘I wondered what it was – I was feeling a little sick.’

The next appointment was lunch with a couple of PR girls at a trendy restaurant. As I waited on my own for them to arrive an attractive waitress bumped into me and apologised with a charming smile: could it have been intentional? I may never know.

WHEN the girls arrived they gave no outward signs of wanting to consummate lunch. Any fantasies of what some newspapers might call a ‘three-in-a-bed romp’ were fading fast as I agonised over when to spill the beans about my sexy secret. I waited until the end of the main course to reveal all. The girls were apologetic for not having exhibited more passion but confessed that they were unmoved. They hadn’t even noticed the smell.