Laurens eyes

Lauren’s eyes

Britain has a new celebrity. Her name is Lauren Luke, and she is… how shall I describe her? Not a film star, exactly. No, she is a video star, a YouTube video star in fact.

Lauren is27. She lives with her mother, her10 year old son, her sister, two nieces and five dogs in a little house in South Shields, in the north- east of England. Lauren used to work in a taxi office. She answered the telephone, and sent the taxis to people who wanted them. It was not work that she enjoyed. She found it very boring.

Lauren had always been interested in make- up. In fact, people told her that she was good with make- up– she understood what sort of make- up would look good on a particular face; or what sort of make- up to wear for different occasions. She decided to give up her job at the taxi company. Instead, she started to sell make- up on eBay, the internet auction site.

Now, men like me find make- up a complete mystery. Why do women want to paint their faces? Do they think that it makes them more attractive to men? Or do they do it to impress other women? I don’t know. I am only a man.

Lauren found a cheap video camera. She put it beside the mirror on her dressing- table, and she started to make short films of her putting on her eye make- up. She put the videos on YouTube, and people started to watch them. At first there were only a few downloads, then hundreds, then thousands, then tens of thousands of people watched her videos. She is now probably the most- viewed make- up artist in the world.

Who watches her videos? I guess that many of them are teenage girls, who want to know how to look like Britney Spears or Kate Winslet. Perhaps they are women who want to know how to put on liquid eye- liner without getting it all over their face. Or maybe they are men, who want to know why women paint the skin round their eyes. Lauren probably knows why women paint the skin round their eyes, but she does not tell us in her videos, she just shows how to do it.

And now Lauren has a weekly column in a national newspaper, and an American cosmetics company will soon start selling a range of Lauren Luke cosmetics. Lauren has come a long way from the taxi office. She is now famous. She is a celebrity.

There is a link on the website to Lauren’s YouTube videos. Lauren speaks with a north- east of England accent, what we call a Geordie accent, but I think you will be able to understand quite a lot of what she says. In the background in the videos, you may hear the sound of snoring. That is one of Lauren’s dogs, fast asleep.

Now, as I have told you before, Listen to English has an ambition to become a celebrity. If I am a celebrity, I might be invited to be on Strictly Come Dancing where I could dance with Cherie Lunghi and other beautiful ladies. Maybe I should get a video camera, and make videos of me cleaning my teeth in the mornings. I could put the videos on You Tube, and dentists everywhere in the world would see them. They would tell their patients to watch the videos, and before long I would be as famous as Lauren, and I would have my own brand of toothpaste. What do you think?