Anti-wrinkle cream frenzy

Consumers have an even better reason to form a disorderly queue around Britain's high streets as another must-have product goes on sale: a lotion to beat old age.

This time the shopping scramble will be for a face cream launched four years ago. Boots is expecting a frantic rush tomorrow morning for its No 7 Protect and Perfect anti-wrinkle serum. Stores in London, Nottingham, Manchester and Edinburgh are opening before breakfast so shoppers past the first flush of youth can start fighting their wrinkles first thing.

In a process planned like a military exercise 200,000 bottles of the potion have been shipped into stores. Supplies are to be rationed at one bottle per customer as Boots tries to prevent "flipping" - where savvy consumers snap up stocks to turn a quick profit by selling them on eBay.

The huge demand was prompted by a Horizon programme, screened on BBC2 in March, which concluded that Protect and Perfect does what it says on the tin.

If, indeed, it does roll back the years, Boots is on to a big winner with its £16.75 lotion. For the £6bn cosmetics industry wrinkle reduction is the holy grail. Customers, almost all female, are prepared to part with serious money for a cream that works. La Prairie Skin Caviar, for instance, costs up to £340, a price that might by itself prompt the emergence of a few frown lines.

Word spread fast about Protect and Perfect - and shoppers cleared the shelves. Boots, which usually sold just 1,000 pots of the lotion a week, knocked out 60,000 in the 10 days after the Horizon programme and stocks ran out.

Unseemly scenes were witnessed in some branches as women desperate to get their hands on the serum tried to search stock cupboards. Orders came in from the US and Australia.

The 30ml bottles started changing hands on eBay for up to £100. Boots stopped production of other creams to divert capacity to Protect and Perfect and more than 100,000 women have since joined a waiting list to be first in the queue for the cream. Yesterday Boots said it was in the process of notifying them that the wonder stuff was back.