ONCE upon a time all we wanted for St Valentine’s Day was a card, a bunch of flowers and a box of chocs.

But today, it appears that Botox, dermal fillers and skin peels are the sought-after gifts on February 14.

According to the Good Surgeon Guide, 78 per cent of women said they would be “impressed” if their partner treated them to some Botox as a Valentine’s gift, with other cosmetic enhancement procedures to tighten and brighten skin and teeth coming close behind.

As ever, “surveys” such as these should be taken with a hefty pinch of salt – but there is no argument that people are now “gifting” cosmetic procedures to each other.

It reflects the growing ease we feel as a society with the notion of changing the way we look, from Botox to iron out frown lines, to liposcution to flatten flabby tummies and implants to make breasts larger.

Figures from the industry back this up. Plastic surgery is on the increase – for the first time since the start of the recession in 2008. Breast implants operations, face lifts and nose jobs increased by ten per cent last year with the biggest rise reserved for liposuction – up 41 per cent.

Ten years ago, the industry in the UK was worth £750 million. Next year, that figure is expected to reach £3.6 billion.

It’s a massive increase – and one can only wonder about its ultimate trajectory.

New procedures pop up and become worryingly fashionable – “designer vaginas” and “titooing” (where nipples are darkened or reshaped by tattooing) are just two examples of the burgeoing choice tempting those seeking the body beautiful.

Trainee lawyer Cherrelle Campbell has been a talking point this week following her appearance on Channel 4’s Bodyshockers series. Cherrelle, a pretty, cherubic 20-something, confessed she didn’t like her smile and hungered after dimples a la Cheryl Cole. She underwent the relatively new procedure “dimplectomy”, whereby a surgeon pierced a deep hole on each side of her cheeks and stitched the flaps together inside her mouth, leaving two hollows in the middle of her face.

For the viewer, this was a “bodyshocker” indeed – in the “after” shot, Cherrelle looked like she had taken a bullet through the face.

Even she didn’t seem too happy with the result, commenting that they seemed a “bit deep”.

My thought was that someone needed to take the surgeon to task (and that’s me putting it politely) – why on earth would anyone with a medical licence do this to a pretty young woman? She looked truly deformed. Surely she could have been talked out of this at the counselling stage?

It makes you wonder how many other patients undergo procedures which fall flat and how many regret what they have done.

Which is why Bodyshockers is such a good piece of telly. Presented by acid-attack victim Katie Piper, who underwent more than 100 procedures after the incident in 2008, the show teams up people planning major body modifications – from cosmetic surgery to extreme tattooing and piercing – with others who have had these done and regret it.

It’s surely no coincidence that the popularity of tattooing has grown over the same time as cosmetic enhancements.

Latest figures suggest one in five of the population now sports a tattoo, and the demand is fuelling the boom in tattoo parlours across the UK, including here in York.

Both trends are driven by celebrities whose appetite for nips and tucks seems to be matched by their desire to turn their skin into a canvas.

While many cosmetic procedures cannot be reversed, tattoos can be removed – by costly and painful laser treatment.

Anyone thinking about carrying out body modification would do well to watch Bodyshockers (Channel 4, Thursdays at 10pm or catch-up on 4OD) for a bit of a reality check.

As for the perfect Valentine’s gift – how about a big kiss and the words (with apologies to Bruno Mars): “I love you just the way you are”.