The glorious artistry of Glow Up might be the perfect Brexit distraction – alongside baby ostriches

Reality is very boring and ugly at the moment – so sometimes it’s necessary to escape into a world of madness and fantasy

I’m doing a lovely voiceover job at the moment for a TV programme that looks at how baby animals spend their first few developing months. I can’t say much more about it apart from the fact that it’s utterly charming and I’m learning a great deal.

For example, when baby ostriches are given the option to move freely in an area larger than a pen, they start spinning around, endlessly turning in circles at dizzying speed. They are also incredibly dim and once given an entrance to a green space find it incredibly difficult to exit the same way. There are so many parallels with this country and baby ostriches at the moment that I will leave you to draw your own conclusions. However, whereas baby ostriches have the option of sticking their heads in the sand as they get older, we really don’t.

So whilst everyone is flapping and spinning in circles around us, let’s look at what’s on offer in terms of distraction.

Well oddly enough this week, I was briefly sidetracked by something called an eGym circuit. This turned out to be a couple of laps around a variety of ergonomically German designed digital exercise machines, all of which are weight resistant and involve controlling a ball along a zigzag shaped snake on a screen in front of you. The result was like a cross between an exercise class and a session at an early learning drop-in centre. All I can say is it’s the only time that I’ve left a gym without feeling either physically sick or bored rigid.

But apart from that, in terms of taking my mind off the truly appalling Westminster situation, it’s been a toss-up between nature and telly.

At a time when nothing much can be relied upon, old Mother Nature has yet again proven her mettle and given us the greatest magnolia show on Earth, ranging from pale pink dinner plate-sized blooms to those with smaller more fuchsia-coloured petals. For those of us who are not horticultural, I’ve done some digging and may I just say, magnolias are incredible. For starters they’re prehistoric, pre-dating even bees and are therefore pollinated by beetles. Yes, ladies and gentlemen there are worse ways of spending an afternoon than disappearing down a virtual internet magnolia hole.

Another thing that has been keeping me calm over the past few weeks is a fabulously escapist little BBC3 talent series called Glow Up, which is basically Bake Off for makeup.

Hosted by that nice Stacey Dooley, with a couple of likeable industry judges, it pits MUA’s against other MUA’s in the search for Britain’s greatest MUA. MUA, for the uninitiated, stands for makeup artist.

I love makeup. I love that given 10 minutes and a handful of high street products I can make my face look 10 years younger than my neck. Sadly since developing dry eye syndrome, I can no longer wear eye makeup which is really boring because I used to totally rock a smoky eye and loved telling a makeup artist to go as mad as they liked.

Of course these days, like some types of magnolia, makeup artists are an endangered species and I miss them. Now that the money has disappeared from most telly jobs, you’re quite often asked to appear “camera ready”, ie fully made up and ready to face high definition.

I’m more than capable of doing my own face, having done my own stage makeup for years because no, Mr Tax Inspector, regardless of what you might think, neither makeup, nor makeup artist has ever been provided by the producers of any live shows I’ve ever done and so yes, I will continue to put it on my expenses.

But even though I can fill in the cracks and chuck a bit of colour on my cheeks, there’s nothing like seeing a proper pro wield their brushes.

The contestants on Glow Up who are mostly self and YouTube taught, are all very young and unlike the punters that put themselves forward for MasterChef and The Great British Sewing Bee, they’re not the most disciplined. What I’m enjoying hugely on Glow Up are the tears and tantrums of the contestants themselves as they’re put through their paces. They’re forever huffing off and having to “take a moment” and weeping in corners. Compare and contrast this to the MasterChef finalists who stoically jumped through hoop after hoop last week without so much as a rolled eyeball.

Ditto the ever-patient Sewing Bee mob who, on occasion could be forgiven for chucking their sewing machines into the Thames, spitting pins and storming out.

Artistic temperaments aside, I really wish the Glow Up contestants well. I hope there’s enough of an industry to support them in their chosen careers, because there is something joyful in the art of painting faces. Reality can be very boring and very ugly and sometimes it’s necessary to escape into a world of madness and fantasy, so thank goodness then this week, for makeup, magnolia and baby ostriches.