TOYAH Willcox pranced through my teenage years, lisping her way into many a young man's heart as she belted out It's A Mystery on Top Of The Pops.

Now, what seems to me less than a fortnight later, she's had a facelift at the grand old age of 46.

Toyah's decision to revamp her features came after she had the bad taste to appear on a so-called reality TV show without a paper bag over her head to protect the viewing public from the female ageing process.

She got what she deserved.

Like Brigitte Neilson, Germaine Greer and Jennie Bond, she was instantly pilloried by press and public for the cardinal sin of being a woman beginning to look her age.

When Toyah returned to the outside world at the end of her stint in the jungle, she found out her face was a standing joke in Britain.

Her reaction to the negative remarks?

"I felt disappointed but I couldn't be cross because I agreed with them," she reportedly said. "I felt great physically but my face looked tired, angst-ridden and worn out."

So Toyah coughed up a large amount of money, got herself a new face, and on Friday can expect to claw back the outlay when her book, Diary Of A Facelift, goes on sale. Judging from the early press coverage, she has a bestseller on her hands.

The interviews she has given in advance of the book make fascinating reading, and will strike a chord with the thousands of women who, like me, have woken up one morning to find themselves suddenly and unaccountably middle-aged.

She describes the cloak of invisibility that descends on women whose looks have begun to fade, and strikes a particular nerve when she talks about the kindness that re-enters her life after plastic surgery.

"Ten days after the operation I walked to the supermarket to do my shopping," she says. "Beforehand, people would tut if I was in their way walking down the aisles, but that day men said 'I'm terribly sorry', and 'How are you?" and actually talked to me."

She is at pains to say she is not recommending anyone to go under the knife, and that it has to be a personal decision.

But Toyah's most telling comment comes when she says: "Psychologically, it is the best therapy. This has saved me - I am so much happier."

It's hard to express just how sad these remarks seem to me.

Why does society treat more harshly those people who are less easy on the eye?

Is it because in our wonky, faithless, youth-obsessed world, we are terrified of death, and old faces remind us the Grim Reaper is always never very far away from all of us? It does not seem to me that things will change for the better while women in the public eye routinely opt for a magic wand to take away the crow's feet and turkey neck that the rest of the world find so unappealing.

Yet I could not say, hand on heart, that if I were in Toyah's shoes, I would not make what for her is undeniably a sensible career move rather than sacrifice my personal circumstances for the greater good of women as a whole.

Maybe if both sexes did not routinely judge women by their youth and beauty, more women would be happier with their lot, and they may feel psychologically fit to tackle the ageing process with a smile, and not the surgeon's knife.

Updated: 08:44 Wednesday, March 16, 2005