IF I didn’t believe that God would strike me down for vanity, I’d definitely have a facelift.

And have something done about my triple-decker stomach.

And, thinking about it, I would have some attention paid to the creeping bingo-wing issue.

And if, despite the fear of lightning bolts, etc, if I did go ahead with any of this I would be quite happy to fork out an extra 20 per cent on top of whatever it all cost – as HM Revenue and Customs is now proposing.

Because absolutely none of this is necessary.

It’s sheer, appalling vanity, fuelled and fanned by an industry that likes to prey on insecurity.

Yet listen to some women and you would think their human rights were being taken away.

Sky TV’s Kay Burley, who recently admitted to having a facelift, apparently described HM Revenue’s idea as: “An attack on women at what is an incredibly vulnerable time of their lives.”

Eh? Are we really saying that Kay and Anne Robinson and Joan Rivers are ‘vulnerable’? To what, exactly?

I could understand if we were proposing to tax cosmetic procedures such as reconstruction after breast cancer, or laser treatment to remove unsightly birthmarks, or the kind of psychological trauma that occurs to people whose nose really does resemble the Gherkin.

But we’re talking about women who want to look ten years younger by having their face chopped open and hoiked up behind their ears.

Imogen Thomas – whose career high to date is her alleged dalliance with Ryan Giggs, bleats: “Some people –women especially – suffer psychologically if they don’t feel their bodies are up to scratch.

“That’s a very real condition.”

Yes, love, but not as real as facial cancer, which can eat its way through bones and skin.

Not as real as the blast injuries caused to our troops who lose their arms and legs.

And not as real as all those brave folk who appeared on My Beautiful Face with the inspiring acid-burns victim Katie Piper.

And, come to think of it, who decides what ‘up to scratch is’?

If you consider that these body-not-up-to-scratch ‘traumas’ include the horror of flappy underarms, liposuction on fat ankles, knee lifts and undercarriage beautification procedures of the type we really can’t describe in a family newspaper, you begin to see how ridiculous it has all got.

The only reason the plastic surgery industry hates the proposals is because they know that a whopping rise in the cost of their procedures will cause thousands of women to think again and they will make less profits.

And there’s nothing beautiful about that.