MY DAUGHTER has never been a girlie girl.

She would, quite literally, rather do her homework and clean out the rabbit than go shopping for shoes or browse the lip glosses in Boots. If we go into town together she steers me away from my favourite clothes stores. Should I stray too close to the doorway of one she grabs my arm forcefully and drags me back into the street.

I feel like a naughty child trying to get into a sweet shop on the way home from the dentist.

In a way I’m quite proud of The Girl’s stand against the superficiality of fashion and her rejection of the shop-till-you-drop culture. If only I felt the same way.

The closest we used to get to mother/daughter bonding with a fashion slant was the annual trip to an out-of-town store (where there is convenient parking) to buy clothes for our summer holiday.

This store ticks all the boxes for Secondborn. She is driven there and back; can get everything she wants under one roof; doesn’t have to go traipsing about from shop to shop; and is spared the need to try anything on because she knows I will simply return everything for her (I’m just delighted to get her into the shop).

And then we discovered Gok Wan, the outrageously camp fashion guru with a prime time television series that has something for each of us.

Tuesday evening has become Girls’ Night. The Man, whose own interest in fashion extends to wearing the shirts I have bought for him, is out playing racquet ball, so we switch on to Gok’s Clothes Roadshow and enjoy, from our different perspectives, a 60-minute televisual feast.

The Girl is amused by his zany showmanship and likes the competition at the end, which pits his stylist skills against those of the rather screechy Brix Smith-Start, whose designer label finds have prices that take your breath away (£18,000 for a coat last week).

I’m a bit of a Gok fan. Or, at least, I used to be.

“He seems like such a genuinely nice person,” I found myself saying a couple of weeks ago, as the once 21-stone, gay presenter paraded his made-over ‘girlfriends’ on the catwalk.

And I have to admire his talent for customising frocks. What he can do with a piece of fringing, a couple of buttons and a bit of bling is nobody’s business.