If I have cosmetic surgery, will I end up looking like Madonna or Donald Duck? – Susan Morrison

Last week, I had an actual meeting, face to face, with other people in the room. They provided the biscuits and everything.

Madonna is 63, the same age as Susan Morrison, but their appearances are somewhat different (Picture: Mike Coppola/Getty Images for MTV/ViacomCBS)

The best thing was, I didn’t have to look at myself. Staring at my own fizzog is one of the many drawbacks of the online meeting thing. I’m not alone, because cosmetic surgery consultations are going through the roof.

In my case, I was horrified to discover that I now strongly resemble a big, grumpy Galapagos turtle, especially round the neck. There’s too much skin. I tried to solve this by using a strategically placed clothes peg, but initial trials were unsuccessful. It kept pinging off.

The wrinkles around my eyes I tackled with Sellotape. That did work better than the peg, in certain lights. By certain lights, I mean a soft candle light, at a distance, in a very long room at night. And the candle wasn’t lit.

My jaw line is moving south. That’s ok. I’m going to keep my mask on, like, forever. I did try a bit more tape to lift the entire lower half of my face, but I found I couldn’t breathe. Side-effects, eh?

I’m not sure just how keen I am on the old cosmetic surgery thing.

Look at Madonna. Same age as me. She turned up at some music awards event recently wearing just underwear and fishnet stockings, presumably having forgotten to put her frock on. Well, at our age these things happen. I did note with approval that her pants were distinctly wipe-clean. Very handy in the case of small accidents.

The phrase, ‘she’s had work done’ came to mind. And, if she has, why not? It's her money and her body. I assume the very best surgeons would have been involved, but it did rather look as if someone had been over-enthusiastic with a bicycle pump. Her derrière was remarkably pert and rounded. My bahookie is roughly the same size, but the weight is distributed in a slightly different way.

Cosmetic surgery is having a bit of a boom time, and Edinburgh would seem to be something of a wild west frontier town. I’m told that getting appointments to be tucked, nipped, lifted and filled is tougher than finding a parking space on George Street. And roughly the same price.

It's not just the Madonnas of this world getting their faces refreshed and their bodies upgraded. Last week I was in Irvine, a first for me. Possibly also a last.

As I went into the venue, I held the door open for a woman who sported plastic fantastic, and then some. Fake boobs, brows, lashes, tan and nails. Her expression was a sort of frozen wide-eyed surprise, a combination of fillers and Botox, which had presumably fixed her expression into the exact look of shock she had when she saw the bill for the surgery.

Her lips were pumped out to Donald Duck levels. Seriously, this dame could have sooked soup through a letterbox. She smiled. She had no teeth. An interesting choice of aesthetics, I feel.

Ah, I dunno. Could I be bothered with all that? Anyway, I have a solution. For those pesky online meetings, I’ve bought a cardboard cutout of Angelina Jolie to hide behind. And for real life ones? A ski mask.

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