I couldn’t live without lipstick!

Novelist Maeve Haran says it gives you confidence and sex appeal in a swipe

THE news that actress Sue Johnston puts her lipstick on before she does anything else really made me laugh. You see, my mum always used to tell me that wearing make-up when you were still in your dressing gown made you look like a tart!

But although I don’t put lipstick on before I do anything else, I would feel absolutely naked without it.

I’ve always understood the importance of a good lipstick. I can still remember my first, Coral Angel, bought with my pocket money at 13. I would put it on in the school loo, cinch in my mac, change my socks for stockings, backcomb my hair, stick my beret on with hair grips and wait for the boys to notice me at the bus stop.

My next significant lipstick moment was my moody Biba period in the early 1970s. With smudgy eyes and lips in shades of dirty pink or faded purple, I perfected my imitation of a bruised plum waiting to be picked.

Even though I was actually studying law at Oxford University, I looked like I was doing a degree in Smouldering. I also went for a curly perm, copied from Maria Schneider, the actress in the famously erotic Last Tango in Paris.

And yes, I can report that the men in the law library were not fully focused on Blackstone’s Statutes on Contract & Tort when I sashayed past them, pouting my purple lips.

Lipstick has its own language, from subtle to bold, intriguing or provocative. Just a touch with a glossy magic tube and you can turn yourself from swot or mouse to vamp or goddess. After the plummy smoulder came something more subtle — brown.

YOU might think that brown is just, well, brown. But brown has a hundred different tones, from sensuous Tobacco to rich Mahogany. When I was in my twenties brown felt hip. It was something your mother would never have worn — as mine often pointed out.

And from brown it was only a skip and a jump to my passion for Nude. I dipped in and out of this trend for years, but it took off after I read that Angelina Jolie wore a pale Laura Mercier lipstick called Discretion.

Why? What was so irresistible about nude lipstick? Not boastful bright red, but the subtle sexiness of the unmade bed. Nude is sexy as hell, it has a hint of French film star Brigitte Bardot.

Nude, of course, should never be mistaken for not wearing lipstick at all.

It’s perhaps the most artificial of all looks, often only achieved with several layers and an outline in pencil for maximum impact. Too much and you end up looking like Claudia Winkleman.

Nude is the lipstick of Modern Bad Girls — Kate Moss is the queen of nude. With nude lipstick you could be a temptress, using innocence rather than experience as a tool in the exciting battle of flirtation. Or so I thought.

But nude, to look its best, needs youthful dewy skin. For the more mature woman there is one real challenge of one’s lipstick life — the search for the Perfect Red. It is a truth universally acknowledged that there is nothing like the Perfect Red to give confidence.

It proclaims, ‘I am a Woman and I am convinced of my power and my sexuality’ — unless of course you have lipstick on your tooth.

We all know the meaning of scarlet lips: challenging, assertive. From Joan Crawford to Dita Von Teese, a slash of red along the lips has always meant sexy and self-confident.

It’s often remarked that lipstick is a fertility symbol — especially in red. A brazen display a bit like a baboon’s bottom. Now that’s a thought.

When I became a writer in my 40s, I suddenly had to be photographed a lot, something I have never relished. Red lipstick saved me. I could slap that on and feel I was smart, savvy and self-confident, even if I did come from a small seaside town!

The other lovely thing about lipsticks is that you can possess loads of them, and often for less than a tenner apiece.

Historically, men have depended on power and money to succeed while women have had to rely on beauty.

Anna Ford, the first woman newsreader on ITN, complained that all anyone ever asked her about was her lipstick colour. She’s right to complain but the rather embarrassing thing is I actually know what her lippy was. It was Shiny Conker from No 7 and you can still buy it in Boots today. I expect, like a lot of women, I secretly bought it because I wanted to be like her — clever and beautiful.

WHEN White House intern Monica Lewinsky, whom President Clinton claimed he didn’t have sex with, was interviewed by Barbara Walters in 1999, the same thing happened.

The TV network was terrified the public would call to voice their disapproval for having her on. And guess what — almost half the calls were women asking for her lipstick shade.

The answer, Glaze, by American brand Club Monaco, became a lipstick legend.

More recently, US politician Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, 28, was criticised for revealing details of her red lipstick shade to the hundreds of her followers who asked her about it.

It was Besos by Stila and it instantly sold out.

And well done Alexandria for proudly sharing the details and refusing to deny her love of lipstick — while insisting women can change the world.

I have suffered agonies when my favourite colour has been discontinued. Body Shop, how could you stop making the lovely, warm brown No 30 when I wore it for five years?

I still live in terror that Mac will stop my current favourite, Taupe, which I can mix with others to make my perfect shade. You can’t even stockpile the stuff. Lipstick doesn’t keep.

Anyone dismissing this as a trivial topic should know there is nothing like a lipstick to boost your positivity.

As you get older the theory about lipstick — and make-up generally — is that Less Is More. Personally I hate that idea. I love lipstick as much now in my 60s as I did when I was 16 — though I do fear looking like one of those terrifying sales ladies they used to have in department stores, with lipstick melting into red runnels at the sides of their mouths like ageing vampires. Eugh!

But I will never give it up. In fact, after plum, brown, nude and red maybe it’s time for coral — exactly where I started all those years ago.

IN A Country Garden, by Maeve Haran, is published by Pan Books.