How I got rid of 'trout pout'

Like Leslie Ash, model and actress Deborah Corrigan knows only too well what humiliation and misery the so called "trout pout" can bring. Permanent lip implants almost destroyed her career and left her deeply depressed. After undergoing the treatment, she was left too upset and embarrassed to go out of the house, let alone attend auditions and castings. Her then boyfriend - comedian Jim Davidson - refused to kiss her and teased her for looking like a porn star or Daffy Duck.

Since her teens Deborah had worked consistently as a model and actress, but following the lip implants she found herself out of work for a year until she had a further operation to have them removed.

The implants had left her disfigured and unable to eat or drink in public. "It was horrific - I had a thick, lumpy upper lip which made me dribble when I tried to drink," she says. "I couldn't work so I had no money, my confidence was gone and people continually asked me what on earth I had had done to myself."

A couple of years ago, Deborah - who is 28 and lives in Chelsea - noticed that many of her actress friends had been acquiring the fashionable Paris Pout. Popular with celebrities such as Liz Hurley, Kylie Minogue and Patsy Kensit, sexier, fuller lips are achieved by injecting a "filler" into them. She had thought for some time that her own lips could be improved to help her get more jobs which involved close-ups, feeling that her top lip was too thin in proportion to the plumper bottom one.

"I found out about which type of implant to have and where to go. Many of my friends were going to a particular surgeon in Harley Street, so I went along for a consultation. The choices were: temporary fillers like collagen or restylane which would have to be topped up every six months or so; or a substance called Artecoll, a "permanent" implant made up of collagen and acrylate beads, a synthetic material like acrylic.

"It seemed like a good idea to have a one-off treatment of Artecoll as I'd heard that the pain was awful and I didn't fancy having to keep going back.

"It cost me £1,600. The first treatment was agony - and that was even with an anaesthetic injection. I was crying with pain - tears were rolling down my face. But in a matter of minutes the whole thing was over and I could see a lovely 'full' effect. When the swelling went down the next day, I was delighted."

That was about two years ago. But only a month later, Deborah thought that the plumpness was disappearing and went back to the surgeon. This is when her problems really began. "He injected more on the left side of my lip than the right. It was completely uneven with a nasty bulge on one side and flatness on the other. Because my lip was so sore after that visit, I had to wait a month and go back to have the right side injected to even it out. To my horror, I still looked lopsided and had to go back yet again.

"Previously, the surgeon had given me half a syringe of Artecoll at each visit. This time he simply pumped the whole lot in."

Deborah said when she looked in the mirror, all she could see was "what looked like the face of a blow-up doll". "Furious, I asked him what the hell he'd done to me, but he just mumbled that it would go down. I went home in a state of shock, hoping he was right.

"When I saw Jim [Davidson], he looked at me and said, 'You look like Daffy Duck after a fight' and then kept making quacking sounds. At first, I managed to have a chuckle with him - even when he said I looked like a porn star. I kept telling him it would go down. But when it was obvious that it wouldn't, I felt complete despair. Jim was horrified but tried to make light of it for my sake, but in the end it made things worse.

"I could feel solid, rock-hard lumps all along the lip. I was humiliated to find I would dribble if I had a drink. I had been told to keep massaging the lumps, but this made my lip very bruised and sore. Jim didn't want to kiss me because it felt so unnatural. All the good-natured joking stopped and he was being serious when he said, 'You've ruined your looks.'"

Jim's observation was only too true; Deborah spent a year out of work. No television commercials or acting jobs came her way and if she did get minor jobs, her mouth had to be digitally changed to look normal. Eventually, she couldn't even bring herself to go to castings.

"I spent a lot of time looking in the mirror and crying. My looks disgusted me and I felt so stupid to have had the implants in the first place. I knew that there had been nothing wrong with my lips before - and I had really messed them up.

"I stopped going out of the house because I didn't want anyone to see me. My friends kept telling me I was mad to have done it - which made me even more miserable because I knew they were right. My career had completely dried up and it was all my own fault. I went to my doctor who prescribed Prozac because I was so clearly depressed."

Eventually, last year, Deborah went to see another cosmetic surgeon, Jan Stanek, who, she says, "shook his head sadly". I have had Botox with him before, but I didn't go to him for the lip implants because I knew he wouldn't do it and would say I didn't need it done anyway." To correct the damage - which Mr Stanek said had been caused by bad technique rather than the implant itself - he explained he would have to anaesthetise her with a dental block, slice into the underside of the lip where it meets the gum and cut out the lumps.

"Thankfully, I couldn't feel a thing, but I heard a loud 'ping' every time he dropped a lump into the metal tray. It was revolting - they looked like solid ball-bearings covered in blood. Some pieces - which had congregated in the corners of my mouth - were as big as my small fingernail.

"The whole business was terribly traumatic. My lip was then stitched up. It felt incredibly sore, but the implants were gone.

"Now, my lip is only slightly bigger than it would be naturally due to scar tissue that formed, but I am happy. Having this implant removed cost me £300 which I could ill afford at the time, but it was worth every penny. My old confidence has returned and my career is back on track and I'm getting lots of work again.

"Jim and I broke up some time ago - nothing to do with my lips, I might add - but I saw him recently and he looked at me and smiled, and said, 'You look great - Lola Ferrari has disappeared.' Never a truer word was said in jest."

Surgeon Jan Stanek is based at 101 Harley Street (020 7487 4454).