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Anita Roddick sells out – to L’Oréal

This TV sketch, based on facts, by john bird featured him in the role of the green crusader

Hi, I'm Anita Roddick. My Body Shop stores have always been famous for our ethical sourcing and our stand against testing on animals. We're good people.

We have just sold our company to the French cosmetics outfit L'Oreal for £652 million. I'm sure you know L'Oreal from their TV ads, with all those A-listers going on about their hair colouring and their vanishing wrinkles. They stopped animal-testing their products in 1989 - well, a lot of people campaigned against them - but their ingredients are still tested on animals.

Of course, animals know the difference between a product and an ingredient, I'm sure they think, "It's only an ingredient so it won't hurt so much."

L'Oreal's background is inspiring, too. Its founder, Eugene Schueller, was the
Its founder was the backer of an anti-Jewish fascist group before the Second World War

backer of an anti-Jewish fascist group before the Second World War and a Nazi collaborator during the German Occupation of France. L'Oreal hired a number of this group as executives after the war. M. Schueller's son-in-law Andre Bettencourt was a propagandist for Goebbels, writing memorably in 1941 that "The Jews, their race is tainted with Jesus's blood for all eternity."

Bettencourt took over L'Oreal from his father-in-law and controlled it until 1994, when the news about his unlucky past forced him to hand his shares to his wife Liliane. So Liliane is now the richest woman in France, which makes her my kind of people. As L'Oreal's chairman said: "A partnership between our companies makes perfect sense." How right he was! Because my husband Gordon and I stand to make £130 million from the deal.

Body Shop is 30 years old this year, and to repeat what I said at the time, "For both Gordon and I this is without doubt the best 30th anniversary gift The Body Shop could have received." It's because I'm worth it.

From "Bremner, Bird and Fortune", C4, April 8

FIRST POSTED APRIL 12, 2006