I'm a sucker for a makeover. I don’t care who’s getting it—a house, a dog kennel, a dude—but I can’t get enough of the ugly duckling to swan trope. My latest go-to show is the revived Queer Eye for the Straight Guy. I sat myself down the other week and hoovered up the first five episodes in one sitting. 

I laughed, I cried, I sobbed and left a pile of sodden tissues around me. Yes the premise is simple, yes it’s been edited to elicit exactly these emotions, yes the fab five have beauty regimes that leave mine in the shade. Who cares. 

The first episode was with Tom Jackson a self confessed redneck with a beer gut and an unholy love for his Jason recliner. Via a beard trim, a clean out of his basement—including said recliner with dried body secretions that literally turned my stomach—and frozen eye masks we get to know Tom as a lovable rev head who’s still nuts for his third wife (or is it his second?), regardless, the interaction with the fab five was sheer delight. 

At the end he meets up with his ex-wife and the two of them do the rounds of a car show before he proudly invites her back to his freshly minted pad for cocktails. We leave them making eyes at one another in the garden. Weep!

Maybe this is how the world can come together: one episode at a time of Queer Eye. 

Hey. It’s not the dumbest idea out there. Arming teachers in classrooms anyone..?