I used to use WD40 for lots of things B.I. (Before the Internet).

I used to spray the black chrome downpipes of my Kawasaki GPZ1100 because I thought it stopped them corroding. It might have, but it probably didn't last long enough to do any good because it all burned off in clouds of blue smoke that blew straight into our neighbours' open windows when I started the motor and the pipes got hot.

As you might expect.

I used to use it as a penetrating oil to penetrate thousands things that were completely impenetrable. It worked so well that many a hitherto immovable nut undid itself and fell off at the most inconvenient moment.

I used to keep a big can - the biggest you could get - in the pile of crap FIAT 128 estate we had. I needed it - a lot of it - when it rained, because otherwise the sparks didn't stay in the cylinders, assuming that they made it that far because the distributor (a Bakelite Magneti Marelli, obvs) had a crack in it which let the sparks escape before they could get to the plugs.

Opening the bonnet when it was doing this at night was like watching a natural history documentary about spectacular meteorological phenomena. It was a lightning storm over the Serengeti. All it needed was a gnu or two.

We did actually keep Wellingtons and rubber gloves in the back in case some of the electricity jumped out and tried to kill us.

Despite this, it did work. On two occasions driving from Guildford up to The Smoke I spent more on WD40 than I did on petrol, but it got me there.

I used it on plastic things and rubber things with equal impunity. Our house - and most of my clothes - reeked of that fabulous greasy and slightly haddocky smell.

I had so much WD40 ingrained in my skin that I couldn't pick stuff up. Any tool without a knurled handle squirted out of my grasp.

It was great. If I'd had a rocket to spray it on, I'd have sprayed it on my rocket. No question.

And then The Internet came along and ruined it.

All the 'experts' who'd been lurking for decades with no means of telling everybody that they'd been doing it all wrong for all that time suddenly had a voice.

And it turned out that WD40 was the reason for the damp patch in the devil's underpants, and anything it touched would either swell up or disintegrate or explode in a ball of fishy flames and that its wonderful pong was almost certainly terminally carcinogenic.

It didn't have 40 uses around the workshop.

It had none.

And you should really be using silicone spray, or specialised switch lubricant, or something with PTFE, or something with lithium, molybdenum, selenium or copper instead.

Or maybe something that had ceramic in it. Ceramic. Like what a teacup is made of? What tosh.

But who was I to argue?

Not my place to pick a fight with shouty blokes with Snap-on tool chests the size of our house and NRA baseball caps.

My giant-sized tin (with the red straw still held on the side with a bit of slimy Sellotape) was relegated to the back of the newly-created specialised lubricants department of the shelf in the porch cupboard.

And then something remarkable happened.

l watched one of those weird little Internet articles that say: 'Doctors amazed when 80 year old woman sprays WD40 into her toilet'.

And now I use it on everything again.

But it's a different kind of everything.

I do spray it into the toilet. I don't know what it actually does in there, because despite clicking 'Next' about thirty times I never really found out.

I got side tracked by another article about what 1970s TV stars look like now or what happened when an orphaned rabbit was adopted by a pack of wolves.

And those Russian dashcam clips. Jeepers! I could watch them all day.

I spray it on my knees and my slightly arthritic hip. I spray it on the lawn, the flowers and the vegetables and the herbs because slugs and snails slide off. Our basil has never looked better. It's totally inedible, but there are no holes in it.

I spray it on the backs of my legs so's I don't get bitten by horseflies while out walking the dogs. I know it works because there are always at least a dozen dead and extremely soggy horseflies in the tops of my highly combustible hiking socks when I get home.

It's a true renaissance. A miracle product that endured a spectacular fall from grace only to rise pheon.. phonei... pohenix-like from its own ashes.

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