#16 Bloody Cheek...

It’s fashionable to have a good old rant nowadays. If you moan and whinge and say rude, obscene, controversial things, chances are you’ll be embraced by the British public and topical debate shows will be falling over themselves to get you into a plastic chair in the hope that you’ll say something incendiary and send the ratings meter into overdrive. This crotchety new climate rather scares me, but having spent a fair few years working in the media it is, regrettably, a climate that has managed to dampen my natural, implausible cheeriness. Yes, it’s all very Devil Wears Prada, but I was once a lowly unpaid intern at the biggest magazine of all and it was during this time that I learned my first valuable and unforgettable media life lesson. If you are a ‘liker’, then my dear, I am afraid that you are deeply, whisper-inducingly uncool. The worst (and most successful) breed of Mag Hag runs around hating everything and everyone. Vitriolically, passionately, biliously dissecting and descrying all in their eye-line. C words are spat out more frequently than full-fat lattes and celebrities, icons and artists are all ugly, or fat, or stoned, or gay, or sleeping-with-the-boss; clubs are crap, restaurants ridiculous, the play du jour is dross and the book that everyone is reading is tasteless, dull and pedestrian. I was terrified of my new workplace – an office of silence, punctuated with piercing, self-aggrandising squawks. Thankfully, further down the line, there were other offices too – friendly, cake-eating, chatty ones – and it became apparent that it was possible to write for a magazine, smile a lot of the time, eat chocolate buttons with your editors and utter the words, ‘She’s so beautiful,’ without being shot down. And, though I might be prone to the occasional super-sized spleen vent, most of the time, I’m a lover, not a hater. So, on this sunniest of spring days – here’s some positivity: Shu Uemura Glow On in P Red 14. A bloody crazy Pete Burns breed of colour – it’s the antidote to all the blushers out there with names like Caress, Whisper or Sigh. In the packet it is pink-in-heat and a generous dusting will create a loud cry of colour across the cheekbone. However, it can also be blended down to give a 'less likely to scare the boys away' pinched-cheek pink. It’s my current NBF – New Best Find - and we're inseparable.