I did an art A-level about 5 years ago and, as you can imagine, spent a lot of time painting. I managed to ruin several items of clothing with accidental paint stains - in particular trousers, since the college art department stools always seemed to have wet paint on them! Oil paint was definitely the worst offender - even if I did catch the stain before it had dried, the oily texture was almost impossible to shift from the fabric.

One day after a particularly bad stain had appeared, my mum suggested I try the Bio-Tex stain remover spray she'd bought recently, as it claimed to be tough on grease. I sprayed some on the garment, washed it in the machine, and - voila! - the oil paint had disappeared. Amazing. Needless to say the spray was one of my essential materials for the rest of my course!

Now I don't know if the spray still exists (I hope it does, because it was brilliant and not just with the paint stains), but I'd definitely recommend it to anyone. Since then I've also bought the powder, which is also pretty good - haven't tested it on oil paint, but I have used it to soak out other grease stains from food etc. I've found that the powder is also mild enough to hand-wash with - it's not too perfumed and doesn't wreck woollens. The only problem is that it's not very good at dissolving in water that isn't hot. Otherwise, a great product and excellent value for money.