Chamois cream - who uses it?

I have never 'lubed up'.

I was reading a post on Velominati about chamois cream and I thought "now wouldn't that be a wild ride!" If you have seen the doco Hell on Wheels you might remember the soigner for Erik Zabel absolutly plastering his knicks with the stuff.

Do you use it? Have you used some? What's it like and why?

The post says:

Back in the days of wool shorts and leather chamois, your brand new Italian shorts had a chamois as soft and buttery as the leather seat of a Ferrari. Yet after the first wash it was a crinkled stiff mess that needed a cream just to smooth it out enough to be rideable. The cream I was familiar with was akin to Bagbalm: a honey colored, thick translucent goo which had to be massaged into the leather. It also gave it enough lubricity to prevent hot spots. Every ride would be followed by a shorts washing then drying and the dried chamois got more goo and massage than your legs. It was a minor pain but one could assume it to be a ritual every roadie did, save Lord Eddy who had Mrs Merckx do it. Did I mention padding hadn’t been invented yet? Just thin leather and the black wool (and eventually thin lycra) it was sewn to.

Lycra replaced wool before synthetic chamois replaced real leather, the synthetic looked similar but behaved better after washing. I stopped using chamois cream because it was no longer really chamois and the need to un-crinkle the thing was gone. ..... I don’t remember when the dim bulb went on in my dim brain, but somehow it dawned on me that the pros were still slathering their shorts up with abandon.