I have a dirty little secret. I'm a sunbed addict. My husband begged me to stop... but one thing finally made me realise the risks are too great

Inside a salon on an upmarket street in London, I pull up the collar of my trench coat and put my sunglasses on before I exit. As I reach the threshold, I furtively check both ways to ensure no one has seen me before stepping onto the pavement.

I’m not shoplifting or buying goods that belong in a brown paper bag, but I do have a dirty little secret. The truth is, I’m leaving a sunbed shop.

No, I don’t have a death wish and, yes, I have read a daily newspaper over the last few years. I know sunbed use is linked to skin cancer. So why on earth am I doing it? Why would an educated, 30-something woman with a high-flying career like me risk it?

What’s worse, it’s not as if I’m an occasional tanner. I have been using sunbeds every week on and off for eight years. At the height of my addiction, in the run-up to my wedding, I used them every single day for ten minutes a time. Although spending any time on a sunbed is unsafe, that kind of intense use is especially dangerous — particularly for someone as naturally pale as me.

In all other respects, my lifestyle is a healthy one. I don’t smoke, I’ve cut back on drinking, I’m very conscious about what I eat, I go the gym, I run regularly and always get my five a day. Yet I cannot shake this one vice, which seems even more socially unacceptable than smoking.

That’s probably why new figures that show more than one in four of us are using sunbeds came as such a shock. No one dares admit it.

Some 28 per cent of those between the ages of 16 and 65 still go to tanning shops or use private sunbeds, despite the risks of skin cancer

The research, from skin cancer charity Melanoma Focus, revealed that 28 per cent of those between the ages of 16 and 65 still go to tanning shops or use private sunbeds. That’s despite 62 per cent being aware that sunbed use can increase the risk of skin cancer due to the UV light damaging DNA in cells.

I have lots of friends where I live in Oxfordshire who use sunbeds — well-heeled yummy mummies who spend time and money on their appearance. They admit they have Botox in a way they never would their sunbed addiction.

My exposure to tanning started early. I grew up with a sunbed in the family home — a giant thing made out of wood and resembling a human oven. We kept it in what doubled up as a study. When I ask about it now, I’m told it was because Dad ‘had a back injury’ and a doctor had advised him to use a sunbed on it.

I suspect it was more to do with his penchant for a year-around tan and his love of a pair of white Speedos on our regular trips to Spain.

I remember coming home from Brownies around the age of seven to see the Steven Spielberg-esque bright blue light emanating down the corridor. You’d hear this comedy ‘ding’ — like an oven alarm —when your tanning time was up. To be fair to him, Dad stopped using it when he realised it was dangerous around the early 90s, but it remained in the house, untouched, for many years.

My own obsession began in my teens — when toned, tanned pop stars such as Britney Spears were the pin-ups of the day. Girls at school started coming in with mahogany-coloured limbs, proudly saying they used sunbeds.

One day, when my parents were out, I dared to fire up Dad’s old machine. I was 15 and did it for ten minutes, my heart hammering with the worry of being found out.

It didn’t seem to do anything much to my skin. The second time I tried it, my parents found out and went absolutely mad. They put the fear of God into me, claiming I’d burn the house down and get cancer. They scared me so much that I became an avid fake tanner instead — that glamorous tangerine tint that went on like Dulux and reeked of Mini Cheddars. When friends asked how I was suddenly so brown, I’d claim I’d just been sitting in the back garden.

Over the years I learned the importance of exfoliation and moisturiser before applying the St Tropez — until one day in 2016 I noticed I’d got a bit of a natural tan from sitting in the park. I’d always thought any change in pigment, other than scarlet burn, was impossible on my skin and was ­desperate to cling on to it.

I was living in London and went to a dodgy looking salon, where the whirring noise of the cylindrical coffin-style sunbed made me worry it was about to explode with me inside it. I was more worried about incineration than skin damage, but it gave me a ­glorious base tan. I went back the following week and so my sunbed obsession began.

For years, I went through long periods of going weekly before something would jolt me to my senses. I’d give myself a talking to about skin cancer and I’d stop for four or five months.

But I’d inevitably return as the promise of summer made me think about bearing my lily-white limbs.

Occasionally I tried to justify it to myself — perversely – on health grounds. I suffer from a little bit of psoriasis on my leg and a friend was once told by a doctor that sunbeds could help. It does make the redness turn white, but I know, deep down, it’s about vanity.

What can I say? I just believe, wrongly or rightly, that I look and feel better with a tan.

Looking back on the times when I’ve really gone for it and used sunbeds intensely, makes me terrified about what I’ve done to my skin.

My husband and I married at his family farm in 2021 and in the lead-up to the big day I was dangerously obsessed with my tan. I wanted to achieve and maintain that perfect sunkissed, just returned from holiday look. I started going daily in my break times at work. Although I never got burnt, I did develop patches of pigmentation and deepening lines on my face.

Ironically the tan has never been about impressing my husband, who would always shake his head at me using them and beg me to stop because of the dangers.

So obsessed was I by my wedding tan, that when I suddenly realised on the eve of my big day that I hadn’t booked that all important last appointment, and despite my pleas the local salon refused to fit me in, I burst into tears. I was already biscuit-brown.

It makes me sound mad but that’s how addictive tanning is. Soon after we married, I did have a four-month period of avoiding them. But I returned the following summer — the lure of the £1-a-minute sunbed package got me.

Then, at the end of last year, I discovered I was finally pregnant with the baby I’d longed for. Sunbeds are bad for unborn babies due to decreasing your levels of folic acid (something you are meant to increase at this time to prevent birth defects). The increase in body temperature is also thought to potentially damage the foetus.

So that was that. I shelved the sunbeds despite the package I’d just bought. It was no longer about me.

I hope that will spell an end to sunbeds once and for all. Not that I’ll ever own up to my family. My middle sister, who’s a doctor, would most certainly disown me.

So it’s back to the self-tan for me. Because, while I might not bake myself on a sunbed again, I still can’t quite let myself return to my original pale white skin.