Laughter Lines or Sink Plunger Lips

The first episode of Botched Up Bodies dealt with a woman who had had permanent filler injected into her cheeks to try to highlight her cheek bones. The images taken before her operation made you think how could anyone be so stupid.

There can't be many people who do not know what happened to poor Lesley Ash - the actress who was beautiful in Men Behaving Badly - who suddenly looked like a trout after having filler injected into her lips. It was a permanent filler and the first time I had come across the term. Her bravery in trying to find out what went wrong was inspiring.

But these days, it seeems as if everyone is obsessed with wrinkles and the search to find ways to 'fill' them. There was a whole collage of images of women having liquid injected in their scrawny necks and crowsfeet.

One of the consultant plastic surgeons talked about why permanent cosmetic fillers should be prohibited.

He said "If you have a problem with a permanent filler, then you have a permanent problem.".

In other words, when it goes wrong, it can stay wrong.

The woman's first operation set her back £300 but it will now cost the NHS £4500 to repair the resulting damage. Delay would only increase the size of the bill.

The wrong type of material was injected into her face and rather than being contained in the areas it was injected, it has spread and she suffers regular infections.

She is always in pain and the infections have caused the originally liquid material to become hard. This means that it could not be sucked out by a syringe but needed to be removed by cutting her face and squeezing it out like pus from a particularly large spot.

70% of UK Plastic Surgeons have reported seeing issues with patients who have had procedures requiring fillers.

When filler is injected, the body responds by surrounding it with collagen to restrict exposure and movement but there are times when this natural process does not work effectively and the filler starts to migrate into areas that it is not meant to be. Worse still, it becomes infected so the effect is lumpy and swollen and it feels extremely sore. A lot of women don't experience this until several years after the original operation.

The only solution is to remove the filler but it is very difficult to get every last particle so, there is always a chance that any remnants could become reinfected.

It's actually amazing how many women will recoil with horror when you suggest having facial rejuvenation acupuncture and yet they are perfectly happy for foreign substances to be injected into their faces?

Growing old disgracefully is the only safe answer.

For the tale of a monarch whose personal deformities were to haunt him for 500 years