Eeeep!

[smokingboot]

So it finally happened. Almost.


One of the very beautiful presenters on our show appeared a few months ago with her skin even more creamy-perfect than usual. She looked radiant. When asked her secret, she was brazen about it; she had just gone for her first course of botox injections, a bargain at £180 for two areas of the face. She's 26.

I couldn't stop looking at that smooth face. See, everyone knows I take my writing seriously - but TV work? It's hard to see myself as any kind of success in this field, not least because all my rivals for work are going to look like her or better.

Now in general I'm OK nick, but since my teens, my forehead's had a few deep wrinkles. I couldn't understand it. I thought it was hereditary as my mum and her mum had exactly the same, particularly the vertical line between my eyes. Does it show? Two friends from the station have been very candid with me: 'Yes, it does. But it's not the first thing noticed. Up close, it looks like a small deep scar...'

So I got the name of Miss DreamyCreamy's botoxist(?), and made my way today to Harley Street for a consultation. Miss DreamyCreamy had looked at the vertical wrinkle and said, 'Boy that's deep! Botox won't work on that, you'll need dermal filler!' The specialist, on examining it, disagreed.

'Are you a very expressive person?' He said, 'Always laughing or crying, face always doing something? Always been this way since you were little?'

I said yes.

'And was your mother sad a lot of the time?'

Again, affirmative.

'And I bet you noticed these lines when you were in your teens or early twenties?'

Right again.

'These aren't wrinkles and they're not hereditary. You saw your mother frown and imitated her. These are expression lines...it's pointless and expensive to put dermal filler in these. All you need to do at this point in your life is train your muscles to stop frowning. We do that with botox.'

I looked unhappy and asked for more details.

'Botox paralyses the muscles. Your first course won't last for more than three months, but as you go on, your muscles will stop trying to knit into that permanent frown. There will be top ups but fewer as you go on. Yes there will be a line, but a very fine one. These others... he pointed at the horizontals above my eyebrows...these are more difficult, because, placed too high the injections can create new ripples, a kind of Jack Nicholson look. But in exactly the right place, on that line, the paralysis will mean your eyebrows drop slightly. You will lose that permanently surprised look you have...'

I have a surprised look? He bade me look at his own face, this good looking man of about 25. '34,' he corrected me, 'I've had everything I'm recommending to you; my advice is to start with chemical peels to brighten your skin, combined with baby botox to soften the lines without losing expression, except for the centre of the forehead where we inject straight into the muscle (Isn't that my brain? I didn't dare ask...) Check up and top up in two weeks. We keep doing it until your muscles get out of the habit of frowning, a few years later perhaps dermal fillers and facial fillers, and when you are very much older, plastic surgery. But this is at least 10/20 years down the line, if then...you are in very good condition considering how long you have been ignoring your skin.'

Holy crap. I asked him to waggle his eyebrows. He did, but not much. He told me more, put no pressure on me and I left, having had nothing done. Because I don't know, you see. Yes I want to have creamy perfect skin sans lines or whatever. But that permanently surprised expression? I kind of like it. It's a part of me. I'm not ready to lose it.

Time for a bath I think, to relax me, eyebrows et al. And not a mad cow in sight...