Leslie Ash and the botox generation

Yes that Leslie Ash. The woman who was famous for being the fit bird on Men Behaving Badly before a botched injection left her with the most famous lips in the UK...for all the wrong reasons.
Incredibly it is now some six years since we first saw the infamous Ash "trout pout" as it will be forever known. In the intervening period Leslie has gone on to become the country's most famous victim of the superbug MSSA (A variant of MRSA), survived it and battled back to health. Albeit she now walks with a stick.
Yet the 48-year-old mother of two's name is not uttered without mention of her cosmetic slip-up. So who better to invite to present a show which aims to get under the skin of all things injectible from botox to dermal fillers.
For someone so vilified by the press for doing little other than show a bit of vanity (surely a career requirement of any self-respecting actress), it must have taken some guts to get before the cameras.
One presumes, given that she received a £5m payout in January this year from the hospital where she contracted MSSA (I don't think the reason she was in there needs re-hashing here, this woman has suffered enuough embarrassment), Leslie is not desperate for cash.
So I believe her when she says that she did the programme because she genuinely wanted to alert women - and men - everywhere to the seriousness of cosmetic enhancements.
And as last night's programme proved, for many women, those risks come way down the list when considering botox or fillers. They are definitely below how young they are going to look afterwards, whether anyone will notice and how much the treatment costs.
In Leslie's show we learned that loopholes in the law here mean it is possible for a beauty therapist who has undergone certain training, to inject certain fillers. In America only dentists, doctors and nurse practitioners are authorised to do this. As one LA doctor said on the show, for anyone else to do it would be classed as assault and battery.
I am not in any way decrying cosmetic enhancement here. In fact I can't say that I would never go for it in the future. Lots of my friends already have and every time I catch sight of the 'number 11' frown lines between my eyebrows I have to admit I wonder "what if?".
But if I did ever decide the time was right for some cosmetic intervention I think I would want it done by someone who had spent a good few years at medical school cutting up cadavers, not someone who just weeks earlier was learning how to apply the perfect spray tan.