As Leslie Ash becomes the latest celebrity to turn to plastic surgery, Women's Editor Christen Pears reports on the fascination with altering our looks and why some people go too far

SOMETHING has happened to Leslie Ash's face. As one of the stars of Men Behaving Badly, the actress became a familiar figure on television, her pretty features attracting a legion on male fans, but recently, she's begun to resemble the Michael Portillo Spitting Image puppet. Following collagen injections, her lips have ballooned to frightening proportions. Bee-stung doesn't begin to describe them: she looks like she's been attacked by an entire swarm.

The mother of two is open about her recent dabble with cosmetic surgery, which includes Botox injections in her forehead and breast lifts, although she admits she was taken aback when she first saw her new pout. She told Woman's Own magazine: "When you get to 42, you experiment. With women, the first place to go is the mouth area. Your lips start disappearing into your mouth. Unfortunately, I think there was a bit too much put in."

Leslie is just one of many celebrities who use plastic surgery to alter their appearance. Actress Patsy Kensit also boasts a set of swollen lips, Julie Christie has had a facelift and Jennifer Lopez is supposed to have had buttock implants to enhance her already famous posterior.

"For film stars, a lot of plastic surgery is professionally driven. If you want to go on playing young parts, you've got to keep looking younger," says Brook Berry, a consultant plastic surgeon at the University Hospital of North Durham, who also practises privately in Washington and Darlington.

"Most people have one or two things done but there are those who don't know where to stop. Michael Jackson must be suffering from a huge inferiority complex. He's completely off the wall and what he's done is sheer lunacy."

Jacko's changing face has fascinated and repelled us for over 20 years. When he first burst onto the pop scene as one of the Jackson Five, he was a chubby-faced youngster, but countless operations have transformed him into a sideshow freak with a crumbling face who is only seen in carefully controlled lighting or wearing a mask.

Michael Jackson proves men can become obsessed with cosmetic surgery but it's usually women who put themselves under the surgeon's knife.

With her 54G breasts - the biggest in the world according to the Guinness Book of Records - porn actress and Eurotrash star Lolo Ferrari became a figure of fun, but her addiction to plastic surgery was no laughing matter. She had her first breast augmentation while working as a stripper and went on to have 18 operations, as well as several on her face and other parts of her body. Psychologists believe she suffered from dysmorphophobia, an irrational belief that her body was repulsive.

But while Lolo, who died in mysterious circumstances in 2000, hated her looks, New York socialite Jocelyne Wildenstein says she's never been happier with hers. Known as the Bride of Wildenstein, she has spent millions of dollars transforming herself into a cat lookalike, with high cheekbones and eyes so slanted it's a miracle she can blink.

Her obsession with her appearance led to the break-up of her marriage to multi-millionaire art dealer Alec Wildenstein. He said of her: "She was a stunner when we married but then she began treating her body like our apartments - it was constantly being renovated." She later struck up a relationship with her plastic surgeon.

In the past, it was only the wealthy who could afford cosmetic surgery but more and more people are surgically altering their appearance. According to a survey published last year, the number of plastic surgery operations in Britain increased by 50 per cent during the previous five years, taking the total to an estimated 65,000 a year, and a cost of £156.8m.

Once Tupperware parties were all the rage, but these days women are popping round to friends' houses for Botox evenings, where they all have injections to iron out their wrinkles. You can have minor procedures such as facial peels during your lunch hour or take a trip abroad and return with a new face.

"My practice has grown considerably over the years," says Mr Berry. "Of course part of that is that I've established my reputation but I do think more people are having plastic surgery.

"Cost isn't really a factor because it isn't that expensive, certainly not as expensive as people tend to think. It's not a question of paying tens of thousands of pounds - £2,000 will cover most things, and there are a lot of people who are willing to pay that. I think, as society becomes more affluent, even more people will try. They're always looking for something new to spend their money on."

The most popular procedure in Britain is breast augmentation, followed by nose jobs, liposuction, eye bag removal and facelifts, but surgeons often receive more unusual requests. One woman wanted her gums reduced so they did not show when she smiled, while another wanted her nipples to stick out permanently.

Techniques are far more advanced than they were even ten years ago. It's no longer a question of stretching wrinkly skin: surgeons can use a combinations of creams and lasers to resurface a face, while liposuction now has an ultrasonic probe to dissolve fat rather than just suck it out. Improvements in anaesthetic mean increasing numbers of operations can be carried out under sedation or local anaesthetic, reducing the amount of time patients have to spend in hospital.

Although technology is advancing all the time, the success of any cosmetic procedure is still dependent on the skill of the surgeon and recent television programmes such as Facelifts from Hell show how easily it can all go wrong. But there are still plenty of people who are willing to take to take the risk if it means attaining their ideal of beauty, or that imposed on them by society.

Glossy magazines constantly present us with images of so-called perfection, often interspersed with advertisements for plastic surgery clinics, a major factor behind the increasing popularity of plastic surgery according to Mr Berry.

He adds: "Most people go out and have one thing done but there are others who have operation after operation because they want to create a certain look or are just barmy.

"Having said that, there are a lot of people who would benefit from plastic surgery who choose not to have it. That shows that it's not for everyone."