My nine-year-old son, Armand, is far from vain, but as I banged on the door of the lavatory at the hairdressers, pleading with him to come out — no, your hair’s not too short; no, you don’t look like the boy at school nobody likes — it occurred to me that we both had an obsession with looks that perhaps needed a little adjustment.

He could hardly be blamed. When your mother is a writer, whose specialist subject is beauty, everything from models on billboards to Cheryl Cole’s hair extensions has an explanation attached to it that goes into the minutest detail. Too much detail. Sometimes this has a healthy impact — Armand refused to talk to me for hours when I caved in to the temptations of a veggie burger at Burger King in JFK airport. But when he tells me I should be a model, or begs to see a plastic surgeon to get his freckles removed, I know it’s time to do something. And while I’m not one of those parents who gives her children a goat in Africa for Christmas, I decided that a trip to one of the Smile Train facilities in Laos, where they operate on children born with a cleft lip or palate, might be just what was needed to see how some children’s lives are profoundly affected by the way they look.

It was also to satisfy my own curiosity about plastic surgery. I’ve been entertained on the yacht of the Brazilian super-surgeon Ivo Pitanguy and partied in Bel Air with Jennifer Aniston’s nose guy. And while the most I’ve ever done myself is to get my teeth whitened by Gordon Brown’s dentist, I’m intrigued to see another, more humanitarian, side.

Well practised in the art of emotional blackmail, I read story after story on the Smile Train website to Armand, until our eyes brimmed with tears. About 3m children worldwide are born each year with a cleft lip or palate, a congenital deformity caused by the craniofacial tissues not fusing correctly in the womb. It’s more prevalent among Native Americans and Asians, but occurs in all races. There was 11-year-old Yi Yun from China, unable to speak or even go to school, teased and taunted by other children. There was one-year-old Juliana, given to an orphanage and brought up by missionaries. Yet after a 45-minute operation costing about £160, paid for by the charity, there are happy endings of rehabilitation, friendship and the promise of a normal life… Continue reading