ONCE upon a time, "work" meant a boring 9 to 5. Today, in my world, it means Botox, filler, polynucleotides, Profhilo, micro-needling and... facelifts. Which is why, at the age of 40*, I found myself supine under the surgeon's scalpel. Yep, I've had a facelift (full transparency, also a neck-lift). And I’m not alone. ******* *******, **** *******, ***** *****, **** **** and ***** ******: all A-list British superstars who have had secret facelifts.

Except I can't name them due to a tedious thing called "medical privacy". In an online world where women - and men -  are under unprecedented pressure to look good, ageless celebrities and influencers are fuelling the myth that they, somehow, are better than the rest of us by virtue of a snatched jawline. They're not. In most cases, they've spent tens of thousands of pounds to look this way, but won't come clean for fear of eroding the facade, or tarnishing the brand. And, in my book, that's not fair.

(Indeed, two stars semi-outlined above pre-recorded Instagram posts to upload whilst they were recovering from surgery). So how did I get here?. Sunbathing, crash dieting and a skin care regime that can, at best, be described as slap-dash. To paraphrase Baz Luhrmann, if I could offer you one bit of advice: wear sunscreen. Really. Do. As someone who's always looked young for their age, suddenly I didn't.

I developed a jowl. My crows’ feet tapered down to my mouth. And in selfies (yes I'm still a millennial), my neck was crepey and wrinkled. In a photo taken days before my op, I zoomed in was genuinely devastated to see the neck of an octogenarian staring back at me. On nights out, people stopped asking my age. I no longer got attention in bars which, as superficial and pathetic as it sounds, I missed. That old adage rattled out by middle aged women started to apply: I felt invisible.

But not so invisible that at Waterloo station, a salesman from Scottish Widows didn't veritably leg over and thrusting some forms in my hand. Evidently I was looking of pensionable age. The next day, I booked in with Mr Paul Tulley. For £20,000, I wasn't convinced I wanted to simply look rested. I wanted foetal. Surgeon to the rich, famous and very successful, I contacted him after seeing his work on Instagram.

It looked subtle and understated; not a bride of Wildenstein in sight, God bless her cosmetic soul. My first consultation took place last May in his Harley Street clinic, where I enquired about a mini-facelift - a procedure requiring just a couple of stitches, and minimal downtime. "No, you're beyond that I'm afraid," he said. "You need a deep-plane face and necklift.". Mr Tulley, it seemed, was not a man for small talk.

He stood me in front of his full-length mirror, and gently pulled up the skin on my sagging visage, explaining I'd lost around two centimetres of laxity. "With surgery, we can fix this," he reassured me. “By re-suspending and reshaping the deep tissues, together with re-draping the skin and trimming the excess without tension, we can take the face and neck tissues to where they were 10, 15 years ago.

"You have good bone structure, and I'd expect an excellent result. People won't know you've had surgery, they'll just think you look well rested or like you've been on a long holiday.". Six weeks later I had a second consultation, and asked a few more questions: what was the down time? (one night in hospital, two weeks rest, no gym for three weeks), would surgery improve the condition of my crepey, sun-damaged skin? (yes), would I look fake? (no), would it hurt? (no, because drugs) and could I still walk the dog? (gently, short walks).

When I got home, obviously I Googled “death rates + facelift”. The results were pretty reassuring. Of course, as with any procedure performed under general anaesthetic, there are risks - but the biggest seemed to be hematoma, which is basically clotted blood, or some temporary nerve damage. At this stage though, surgery still all sounded like some sort of vague, amorphous concept that would never come around.

But working in showbiz, writing day-in, day-out about the young, beautiful and Botoxed - and then seeing myself back on camera on the occasional TV thing - was making me feel increasingly sad. I found myself avoiding photos with friends, wanting to go out less and turning down on-camera work. I was also spending a small fortune on various "tweakments". Botox and filler (around £450 each a pop), Morpheus 8 (£1200 for a course of two, excruciatingly painful, did absolutely nothing), Profilho (£650 for two sessions, only lasted four months), trout sperm (£800 for three, bad bruising) and Sculptra (£750, useless).

So not only was I spending around £5,000 a year trying (and failing) to reverse time, I was still feeling crap about myself. The idea, then, is that by having surgery I will have effectively paid if off after four years - as well as saving countless hours trudging to Harley Street after work. Pre-op, I was given a £285 course of Skinade MD - capsules, and two types of sachet drinks which were to be necked daily.