SLEB Safari is fascinated to the point of near borderline obsession with the Guardian newspaper’s How I get ready column and practically fell off its chair recently when Jo Malone spilled the secrets of her 25-minute transformation.
Jo, a lady who flogs candles for £40 and names perfumes things like London Rain, says as long as she's had a blow dry she can be out the door in 25 minutes, which doesn't sound too bad until you discover what she squeezes into those 25 minutes.
In a nutshell, she has some dinner, makes a face mask, drinks a glass of wine in the bath by (Jo Malone) candlelight, dyes her eyebrows, bleaches her teeth, paints fragrance on to her body – paints it on, people, paints it – and oils her hands and feet because "nothing looks worse than dry feet if you’re wearing sandals".
Then she gives her hair a "zhush" with a rotating brush and she's out the door in a black suit, drop-diamond earrings and vintage Prada shoes.
Jo broke down this 25-minute power routine in the easy breezy manner of a woman who has someone at home to make baked potatoes for her and whose job it is to keep the bathroom cabinet stocked with enamel friendly bleach and eyebrow dye as well as cleaning, doing the laundry, ironing and grocery shopping.
"I multi-task," Jo told the Guardian, which Sleb Safari thinks is a gross understatement.
"I’ll get out of the bath and my skin will be moisturised because of the mask, which I clear off with a warm face towel. I pop Vaseline round my eyebrows, then quickly dye them so they look dark – leave it on too long and you look as though you’ve two caterpillars above your eyes," Jo explained.
The next thing on her list is the laying out of clothes, the aforementioned suit, diamonds and heels. After that it’s a cup of tea “and a baked potato or toasted ham and cheese”.
Then she pops in her gum shields with toothpaste bleach and leaves that to simmer for 10 minutes.
After that it's time for the hair zhushing and fake eyelashes.
"Because my hair often drops, I’ll zhush it up with my rotating brush. I don’t wear a lot of make-up but I do wear MAC base and put on false eyelashes, blusher and lip gloss."
And finally to Sleb Safari's favourite bit, the application of fragrance with a brush which Sleb Safari hopes is not the same one she uses for the garden fence.
"I paint Pomelo fragrance on to my body with a brush and let it dry, then do a second layer. Then I’ll get dressed and spray whatever I am wearing with the same fragrance, and I am ready to go."
How Jo gets all that done in 25 minutes is a mystery. Sleb Safari doffs its hat to her.
Alarming comments from Bear Grylls
BEAR Grylls, everyone’s favourite urine drinker, has been spouting about alarm clocks of late.
“Alarm to me says ‘emergency’ and that my life is in danger,” he mused.
“That’s a terrible way to start the day. I call it, instead, my ‘opportunity’ clock. Waking me up to give me the opportunity to get out there and grab life with both hands.”
That’s all well and good, Bear, but Sleb Safari can tell you that when it has to start work at 7am and its ‘opportunity’ clock goes off just after 6am it literally does feel like a genuine emergency, to wit, that the world is ending.
Sam Smith has fallen out of love with fame
SOMEWHAT sobering news from Sam Smith who is taking time off from his day job as a Grammy-award-winning singer due to the fact he has practically forgotten what his family look like.
Sam was already enjoying some down time after undergoing surgery on his vocal chords and hanging out with his mum, dad and sisters who he said he was having put on the after-show guest list if he wanted to see them.
That is whack.
He told Magic radio station his surgery had been “the best thing that’s happened to me ever”.
“I feel like I’ve been gifted with time. I got to stop for a month and rest, and become normal again and to realise how insanely my life has changed.
“And in some areas it’s changed for the worse. It’s been really tough if I’m honest... Some things are taken away from you so it was beautiful for me to be able to kind of regain my normality. Just to be with my mum and dad and my sisters and remember how to laugh and chat about them and not have to talk about me all the time.”
Sleb Safari can imagine jabbering on about yourself day in day out would be both exhausting and narcissism inducing.
Probably for the best he’s taking some time off before he turns into a Kardashian.
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