15 November

On this day in 1904, the fabulously named King Camp Gillette received a patent for a new kind of razor, putting a gadzillion barber shops out of business and making shaving rather safer than it had been in the days of cut-throat razors and the demon barber Sweeney Todd...

The project was not, however, as easy as it seemed. To start off with, creating a disposable, safe blade required producing steel that was hard, thin and (importantly) cheap - a project that took two years of experimentation. Today, safety razors are the default style, his company was sold for over 50 billion dollars in 2005, and the jingle "The best a man can get" is recognized worldwide.

We will be celebrating clean shaves, close shaves and smooth shaves with a not terribly masculine - yet extremely moreish - cocktail, the Smooth & Creamy. Now to get that jingle out of our heads...