If you are reading this article over breakfast, the chances are you have recently stepped into the shower, lathered up your hair and torso, rinsed off, towelled and blow-dried, before dousing your armpits with deodorant, and wafting on a fog of perfume or aftershave.

Then again, maybe not. The New York Times has just reported on a new trend towards what's sometimes known as soap-dodging. Among those who have cut down on daily showers, baths or hair-washing were a woman who swipes a sliced lemon under her armpits instead of deodorant, another who uses baby wipes to freshen up after her lunchtime runs, and a salesman who shampoos only once a month and gave up anti-perspirant for three years.

Think this is only happening in the US? Think again. There are plenty of signs that this carefree attitude to cleanliness is popular in the UK too – and in some cases growing. Last year, a poll for tissue manufacturer SCA found that 41% of British men and 33% of women don't shower every day, with 12% of people only having a proper wash once or twice a week. (These figures place us behind Australia, Mexico and France in the personal hygiene stakes.) Around the same time, research by Mintel found that more than half of British teenagers don't wash every day – with many opting for a quick spray of deodorant to mask any stink.

Over the last few years there have been regular suggestions that daily hair-washing, or even any hair-washing at all, is quite unnecessary, with the commentator Matthew Parris admitting he hadn't shampooed his hair for a decade, and broadcaster Andrew Marr reporting himself perfectly happy with the results when he followed suit for a short while. Many people clearly agree that a regular hair-wash is a hassle. In 2008, Boots reported a 45% rise in sales of dry shampoo ( a product that can be sprayed on hair between showers), while the Batiste brand has recently seen its sales double.

There are, of course, environmental benefits. In a bid to reduce his carbon footprint to the absolute minimum, environmentalist Donnachadh McCarthy, 51, limits his showers to about twice a week. "The rest of the time I have a sink wash," he says. "I believe that I'm as clean as everyone else." It has helped him to get his water consumption down to around 20 litres a day – well below the 100 to 150 average in the UK.

As McCarthy points out, it's only recently that we have expected people to bathe or shower every day. "When I was a kid," he says, "the normal thing was to bathe once a week." Head much further back into history, and we find Elizabeth I bathing once a month, and James I apparently only ever washing his fingers. In 1951, almost two-fifths of UK homes were without a bath, and in 1965, only half of British women wore deodorant.

Now we have begun to fetishise extreme cleanliness, to create the kind of culture where, as McCarthy says, it's not entirely unusual for people staying in hotels to churn through 1,000 litres of water a day – showering in the morning, after a sauna, after the swimming pool, before dinner, before bed. The international market for soaps of all kinds is now $24bn a year. And some dermatologists fear that this intense, regular washing is stripping our skin of germs that could actually be beneficial to us, that help our skin stay healthy, balanced and fresh.

It might be worth us all occasionally missing a shower or two, then, so long as we don't throw out the baby with the bathwater. While being environmentally friendly is good, smelling like a bin is not.

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I should probably recuse myself from comment on this topic, since one of my more minor disabilities is that I have lost my sense of smell. Yeah, you could set me down in the middle of congress and I wouldn't notice a thing.

Anyway, I remember from my childhood just after World War II when our house still had manual hot water. You had to plan ahead to wash dishes, do the laundry or bathe. There was a hot water tank in the kitchen and a cast-iron "stack" hooked to it which held a gas-fired burner which heated a coil of water pipe.

You never, ever wanted to light it and forget it, because the tank would explode and destroy your house while scalding steam injured any survivors.I tried to find a photo of the contraption on the net, but couldn't.

My folks had a fancy gas range in the kitchen that included an add on section that acted as a heater for the kitchen. It also had a loop of pipe from the water tank running through it, so in the winter, we had the luxury of instantly available hot water at the tap. Just like wealthy people.

Cleanliness is next to Godliness. Like Angels...

Nowadays, I have a wife who has a shower every morning and a bath every evening. After the bath she has to put on all kinds of lotions to replace the oils and stuff that she's washed out of her skin. I've pointed that out a few times, but whatever she's doing seems to be working. She's 12 years younger than me and looks 24 years younger.

For my part, I bathe at least once a day. I can't smell, but my wife's nose is sensitive. I wouldn't mind offending anyone else, but I try to stay on good terms with her. She DOES notice though when I "forget" to shave for a few days. I try to explain that I'm just emulating my childhood hero, but she doesn't buy it.

"Gabby" Hayes