FACE it. If someone gave you the choice between looking 10 years younger free of charge, or growing old gracefully, it's unlikely you'd plump for the crow's feet and the chicken-bum lips.

In fact, it's only because most cosmetic procedures cost an arm and a leg - make that a thigh and a buttock - that the world isn't full of people who look like they've just been air-blasted, shot through a wind-tunnel then smacked on the chops with an iron bar.

For that's what all the graduates from the plastic fantastic school of beauty looked like in Super-Botox Me (C4, Sunday, 10pm). A fascinatingly gruesome documentary, it followed Times journalist, Kate Spicer on a very personal investigation into the line-free, expression-free world of cosmetic enhancement'.

The reason this show worked so well was all down to Spicer. Approaching 40, single and feeling unhappy with her appearance, she was refreshingly intelligent and frank about her sudden desire to look hotter' using the latest techniques available.

There was no excitement or gusto or post-modern irony about it, just honest trepidation and what almost amounted to shame at how she was selling-out, turning her back on her hitherto strongly-held, feminist views that looks don't matter and women shouldn't allow themselves to be defined by how pretty they are.

Because even she couldn't escape the fact that, in a world where most make-up companies use models in their teens (and still airbrush them!) and where celebrities can be talentless oiks provided they're flawless oiks, the pressure on women to look good, ie young, all the time is intense.

So, swallowing her pride and her old beliefs, she packed her (eye)bags and headed for the Mecca of the make-over, the US.

And this is where she should have realised that no matter how much you spend, or how good your consultant, you always end up looking weird.

In fact, even before she left the UK the clues were there.

Like when she bared her soul and, worse, her face, to a panel of beauty industry know-alls who then told her what was wrong with her face and what she should do about it, and there, bang in the middle of this bunch of experts' was a woman who looked liked she'd borrowed her gob off Jemima Puddleduck.

This bird with a comedy face the colour and texture of putty was telling this nice, attractive, if a bit tired-looking woman that she looked rubbish.

What a cheek! And even that was fake.

Anyway, ignoring this clue, she crossed the pond, where despite encountering some terrifyingly freaky faces, and these were just the consultants, she had a variety of treatments, all of which looked if not downright dangerous, at least uncomfortable and often so painful she was weeping.

Speaking of which, when she was alone (well, apart from a 10-strong film crew) in her hotel room with buckets of blood streaming from her eyes, like some victim from Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds, I thought, thank goodness this all costs a fortune. Because I'm a total coward and only the mad, the sad and the seriously minted could go through all that trauma just so someone at the next table can snigger and whisper: "Botox slut alert! Nice upper lip, though, looks like a Doctor Slicer job to me..."

Yuk. Somehow beauty has become the beast.

And you know what comes next. After all that agony, both physical and mental, Kate came home looking a bit fresher, a bit perkier round the eyes, but nothing she couldn't have achieved with a blob of make-up and an early night.

Which is what I should have had Tuesday, instead of watching the first episode of Mutual Friends (BBC1, 9pm).

This is the new Cold Feet, apparently, but, much to everyone's dismay at the time, I didn't love Cold Feet quite as much as I should have, so I wasn't over-excited about this young pretender.

It's aimed at the 30s to 40s generation, working types trying to juggle jobs, kids, friends, and there were endless scenes contrived to have us all nodding wryly and thinking "that's just so like my house/relationship/work/ fridge", whatever.

But it wasn't, because all the cast were impossibly good-looking (I hope Kate Spicer wasn't watching or she'd be on the blower making another appointment) and all the houses were gorgeous and all the things that happened, no matter how awful, were quite funny. But not as funny as the writers obviously thought.

And the cast, Keely Hawes (totty off Ashes To Ashes) Marc Warren (moody suit-wearer off Hustle), Alexander Armstrong (toff off the Pimms o'clock advert), while all meeting the legal requirement that actors must be look good at all times, were often so wooden, you might as well be watching Meetings With Remarkable Trees over on BBC4.