Remember when razors had one blade?

Then someone introduced the concept of the twin-blade razor. Wow.

Then there was the Gillette Mach3, which upped the ante to three blades.

So of course Schick had to release the Quattro, with four blades.

The latest move in this escalating war of Mutually Assured Smoothness is Gillette's Fusion razor, which comes with five, count them, five blades on the main razor head, plus an extra single blade on the rear of the head to trim those bits where five consecutive blades might just be slightly overkill and actually make the job harder.

We can all see where this is going. As manufacturing techniques get more sophisticated and nanotechnology brings with it the miracles of consumer products built on ever-smaller scales, we will eventually witness the ultimate in shaving technology, the fractal razor blade, which, as Spanners says, packs an infinite number of blades on to a finite razor head.

And what makes you think the razor companies will stop there??