When I eventually screw up enough courage to peer into the mirror, it seems as if my body has been playing cruel tricks on me during the night. Suddenly I have the eyebrows of Denis Healey. What could be better first thing than to take very sharp, very pointy tweezers and repeatedly jab them towards my eye? I really don't need that kind of pressure before I've even had my first caffeine hit of the day. The never ending battle of trying to (a) keep my eyebrows tamed and (b) keep them even is a crushing weight of responsibility.

Eventually the moment has to arrive. With my eyes looking like two pee-holes in the snow, I have to start the long and painful process of putting on the slap.

The under-eye cream is the first thing – to ease the puffiness. It's really only after that's sunk in that you realise the puffiness was at least keeping the wrinkles filled out. Anti-ageing, light-reflecting foundation next, obviously applied with the special (and especially expensive) foundation brush that leaves me with loads of little black hairs all over my face. It should, by rights, be bald by now.

After that, concealer. Then a little more concealer. Possibly just a touch more. Aha. Those wrinkles around my eyes finally have a purpose. To collect all my concealer and give me yellowy-orange rivulets of colour under my eyes.

Then the eyelash curlers. To "open up the eye and brighten your appearance", apparently. Counting to 30, I am distracted by Mr Turner shouting through to ask if I want coffee. Have I curled my left eyelash for longer than a count of 30? Does that mean that it is more curled than the right one? Of course, as I peer at the mirror to find out, I screw up my eyelashes anyway, so there's no way of telling. Blusher next. I can never work out if it actually makes me look "fresh and bouncing with vitality" or like Coco the clown.

All the work that I've done in opening up my eyes is promptly undone by applying eyeliner. Circling them in black manages to turn them back into tiny little pinpricks in a doughy landscape. Mascara only serves to highlight that one eyelash is definitely more curled than the other. Lipliner – to stop my lipstick from bleeding upwards into those charming little lines caused by years of smoking. Then lippy itself – supposedly the final flourish in my maquillage, it just has the great effect of making my teeth appear yellow.

As I'm doing this, I notice that my nail varnish is chipped. I don't have time to take it all off, so I throw the bottle in my bag to touch up when I get to work. That and a tube of age-spot relieving hand cream and I'm good to go.

My first call when I get into work is to a drag queen – no one ever said this job was predictable. He's proving a little difficult to pin down to a time for our photographer. "It takes ages to get all this together you know," he says to me. No kidding.