You probably don't get this from looking at my head shot, but I'm freakishly tall. Not model-height so much as, "Oh my God, are you standing on a box?"

It's one of those things I forget about, until a stranger says something helpful like, "God, you're tall." (Gee, thanks, I hadn't noticed!) I got an embarrassing reminder last week when I went for a fake tan. I was there in the paper G-string when in came the beautician. She is five-foot-two.

She began with my legs. All good. Then my tummy. Fine. Then things got tricky. "Um, could you lean forward?" she asked diplomatically. But she could still only reach up to my mid-chest.

Bending my knees was a no-no, apparently, due to the drying tan on my legs. So she got on tiptoes and pointed the gun straight up, making small leaps into the air to try to reach as far as the top of my arms.

"Do you want your face done?" she asked.

"Er, no thanks."

I ended up looking like a dip-dyed dress — going from dark orange at my toes to a patchy yellow around my neck. But I wasn't the only NW-ette to suffer a tanning disaster.

Before going on holidays, associate picture editor Nicky hit the automated tanning booth. She attached the cardboard stick-ons to her feet and assumed the body-builder pose.

After a hurried countdown, tan started shooting at her from several nozzles. Then the machine told Nicky she had five seconds to turn around. As she swivelled, she lost her footing and fell, her forehead banging smack into one of the nozzles. The whole thing was over before she knew what had hit her.

Unfortunately, the large dark stain in the middle of her forehead did not disappear so quickly!