Today’s Friday Flash Review concerns the much-tweeted-about Glossybox. Glossybox is a new beauty concept; for £10 a month the subscriber receives a pretty little box containing five luxury samples from high-end brands. I think that this idea is both genius and potentially disastrous all at the same time – genius if the samples are always brilliant, and potentially disastrous if they run out of steam after the first few boxes and start supplying samples of Barry M and Tescos Skin Wisdom. But being a mere mortal with zero fortune-telling ability, I can only judge by the first box and – boy – what a debut it promises to be! Check out the products in the photo above – products which will inevitably not be in my box, because it will be like the organic vegetable box – full of swedes and potatoes, no asparagus or purple sprouting broccoli. Knowing my luck.

“DING-DOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOONG!

It is 7.55am and I have had four hours’ sleep. The man of the house waltzed in at 2am after dropping his keys three times on the driveway (I was watching from the window like a psychopathic mother) and announced his presence in the dark bedroom with a bellowing “HI-de-HI!” He then regaled a few Tales from Stoke Newington, including how he had bought a bag of chips in a graveyard and also got into an argument with a man called Aldous Niketown. Shortly after this, the Night Symphony began and so I retired to my office and the ‘sneaky sleep’ bed that is so brilliant for afternoon naps. Not so brilliant for proper sleeping as it’s at the back of the house and you have to listen to foxes shag each other which is one of the most hideous sounds nature has managed to conjure up.

So 7.55am isn’t ideal, but here is my GlossyBox and I’m pretty excited, let me tell you. I have seen the photos – it looks fab! What will I get? Each box is supposed to be tailored to the individual, but – sod that! – I want the stuff in the photo! I’m opening the box. Here is the outside box:

Very nice! I like that it isn’t in plain old brown – although possibly this might make my local sorting office even more sticky-fingered than usual. Inside the box is another box – the box box…

…inside that, some leaflets and bits of information, all very nicely presented and…..

…THE PRODUCTS! Please do excuse me whilst I perform a few dance-moves. Just so you can get a visual on this, I’m wearing Umbro tracksuit bottoms stained with Turmeric and a green silk shirt. Just one of my classic ‘hurry to answer the door to the postman’ sartorial statements.

Take a look at those products! I’d just like to point out that a) the NARS Illuminator in Orgasm (full 30ml!) has an RRP of £21.50. Ex-squeeze me if I’m wrong here, but with the price of the box being a tenner, does that not make it exceedingly good value even if there was only a NARS product in there? Admittedly, my sceptical brain-lodger, Brian, is telling me that this is all a nice little PR stunt to get everyone raving about the GlossBox, but then… what if every month is the same? I feel quite sick with excitement!

Let’s take the NARS out of the equation (show-off NARS!) and have a gander at the other bits. An All for Eve lipstick, RRP £10, the most perfect, smooth, sexy red I have seen in ages. I would never have picked this out but now, suddenly, I cannot survive without it. It’s amazing. An Alterna Caviar repair spray equivalent to about £7 worth, a Como Shambala mini body lotion (I already have some and it’s amazing – I was going to review next week) worth around £3.50 and a mini-mini of Bionova’s Cleanser, just a weeny 4ml so not of huge value.

This is great! I am genuinely excited about my red lipstick and it’s brilliant that I can get to test out the Alterna and Bionova without having to invest in full-sized products. An added bonus, here, is that I am obsessed with all beauty things in miniature and I have three travel-sized pieces to add to my collection! Don’t even get me started on the NARS. This is a full-sized, luxury product – for £10. Again, Brian my brain-sceptic is chuckling at my naivety – but what if? What if there’s a bloody great whopping ‘First Prize’ in every box?

I can’t see how GlossyBox would maintain that kind of level for any amount of time, but hats off to them for an amazing first effort! I’m intrigued to know what comes out in the second and third. I suppose so long as each sample is worth more than £2, the box pays for itself – but there’s always the question of whether or not you’ll actually like the samples sent. I think that there will always have to be one relatively high-value ‘crowd-pleaser’ with a ‘one size fits all’ feel to it. A nice body lotion, mascara, hair serum – something from a great brand that will make people truly happy when they open up the box!

Well done GlossyBox – this first box is – for me, at least – an absolute stunner. In ‘organic veg-box’ terms, it contains a Jerusalem artichoke, a bunch of asparagus, an aubergine (yum) and two courgettes. No potatoes, swedes or turnips in sight!”

You can subscribe to Glossybox at GlossyBox.co.uk – it’s £10 per month, delivered, and you can cancel at any time. For every review you give on products, you earn a GlossySpot and once you’ve collected 20 spots, you get a free box. Nice! That could be a free box every four or five months!