Is it possible to be allergic to somone's smell?

Family members are naturally allergic to each other's body odour in order to avoid incest

Apart from the appearance of Boy George beside William Caxton in a recent BBC poll to find the 100 people who have contributed most to British cultural life, nothing much shocks me anymore. Having said that, I confess I was shocked, outraged even, by what my friend Lizzie told me the other day. Have I told you about Lizzie? She's the twice-married, apparently divorced, glamorous, blond, American stylist who spends more on subscriptions to dating agencies than Elton John spends on flowers. When she rings I put everything on hold because I know I'm in for a long session about her latest relationship. I can usually tell by the way she says "hi, it's Lizzie", whether it was a rat or a Romeo. The last one was super rat.

They met, said Lizzie, three weeks ago through a new sports-orientated agency called Game Set And Match. They had played tennis, gone bowling, jogged. His muscle definition was incredible, the omens looked good, the preliminaries were over and on Friday she had invited him back to her flat for supper and, well, she had changed the sheets and put joss sticks in the bedroom. So what went wrong, I asked.

Before we go any further I should tell you that some screws, wild horses and a truck full of Spanish inquisitors wouldn't have persuaded me to tell anyone what Lizzie told me. There are certain things you take with you to the grave. They had their candle-lit supper, drank quite a lot of wine, listened to her Nilsson Schmilsson tape and then just as she discreetly lit the joss sticks he said: "Listen, I think you're terrific but this relationship isn't going to go any further because the fact is, I'm allergic to your smell." Pow. For a moment I thought I'd heard wrong like that bit in Behind The Wall by Colin Thubron when he's on a flight from Beijing to Shanghai discussing with a woman their respective national prejudices and idiosyncrasies. It's well known that the Chinese think Europeans smell peculiar because we eat dairy produce. After a bit Thubron asks: "By the way, do you think I smell?" "Yes, yes, of course you do," she replies, and it takes some while for him to realise she thought he had said: "Do you think I smile?"

Alas there was no misunderstanding in Lizzie's case. Her would-be lover said it wasn't her fault, it was genetic and therefore something she had no control over like, well, being blond with green eyes. That couldn't have gone down well. Lizzie isn't a natural blond and I helped her choose her tinted contact lenses. Still, there was no stopping Mr Muscle. It turned out he had something to do with the human genome project and expounded at length about chromosomes and how it is as possible to be allergic to someone's body odour as to peanuts or pollen. I said furiously that I hope she threw him out immediately. I don't know why but of all the insults you can be hit with this one must be the worst.

Lizzie said she hadn't, she had wept and said she would shower, change her soap, her deodorant, her scent, but Mr Muscle was adamant. Your smell, he said, was as distinct and unchangeable as your fingerprints.

So why, you wonder, am I telling you this distressing saga. Only because on the Six O'Clock News there was a report about scientific evidence that proves that family members are naturally allergic to each other's body odour in order to avoid incest, thus preserving the optimum genetic viability of the human species.

Apparently the researchers had got 100 families with three children or more aged between 10 and 20 to wash with odour-free soap, wear identical odour-free T-shirts for a day and, then having been blindfolded, to sniff all the shirts and grade them accordingly into yucky and yummy categories. Ninety-nine per cent of the daughters said yuck when they sniffed their father's T-shirt and vice versa. Ditto the sons with their mother's T-shirt and vice versa and same with the siblings. And yes, you've guessed it, the yummy T-shirt, it was discovered, belonged to those people that the sniffers fancied.

I bet the experiment would have turned out rather differently if they'd had to sniff each other's socks. If the viability of the human race depended on socks before sex we'd be an endangered species. There's a moral here somewhere but I'm damned if I can see it. Beware researchers with T-shirts, rude men no matter how muscular, and, above all, polyester socks.