Regular readers will know that a few weeks ago I posted a story about how I felt out of touch with some of the younger makeup brands. It’s a specific kind of mutual ageism - they don’t focus their marketing efforts on women over 50, while I have an in-built snobbery around TikTok-focused brands with founders I don’t relate to. Kids! Pah! Makeup artist Kay Montano agreed with me, and so off we went and made a little film.

You can hardly blame me. I grew up at at time when going backstage was an unbelievable, I’d-give-my-firstborn-to-attend privilege reserved to just a few journalists, and the makeup artists you met were creative legends. But now? A few years ago, I struggled to find a journalist to cover backstage at a key couture show. Shows had become so frequent, backstage coverage was so heavily sponsored by the big-hitting cosmetic brands that all the juicy stories were controlled, and everyone was posting before the first stiletto clad foot was even hitting the runway. The special-ness had died.

No wonder all the fun slightly younger looking brands have gone their own way - I’m talking Merit, whose social media is always cool, e.l.f, whose annoying positioning of capital letters and full stops had kept me away until now, Rare Beauty, Rhode and Refy, whose soft matte lip pencils get everyone asking me “what colour are you wearing?” to name but a few. I don’t want to miss out on all their cute packaging, and while the shade ranges aren’t as diverse in my opinion as say Nars or MAC in their hey day (there is a hell of a lot of beige and brown out there, how many more palettes of caramel do we need, really?) - who do I think I am? Creating Topolino-esque daisy-lashes most mornings? (Google him). Way Bandy contouring? (before my time, but still an influence). Pat McGrath gilded glitter lips for John Galliano? No. I’m more of a smudge of black eyeliner and a beige-y berry-lip and out the door I go, night and day, day and night.

Kay Montano is one of those aforementioned makeup legends from back in the day, who you’d see backstage, or on the set of a shoot for Vogue or The Face. She is flown all over the world to “do” red carpet talent, and much valued for her brilliance with skin, keeping it natural while enhancing everyone’s best features. She’s about the same age as me, roughly the same colouring as me, and once did my makeup for a shoot that Chanel (she is an ambassador for them) organised for a press day with the photographer Nick Haddow, whose portraits always bring out the absolute best and then some in a woman. That picture turned out to be one of my favourites. So when Kay invited me on to her new… not sure what to call it, a podcast? A tutorial? An interview? (The Skin I’m In is all of those, but let’s start with “series” as I’m not the only person, there are now a few of us and she’s building it with more and more guests), I ran, I did not walk.