Surgeon used Jacko's ear to fix nose

A leading doctor yesterday revealed how he repaired the appalling damage that Michael Jackson did to his face through plastic surgery.

Professor Werner Mang told how the superstar's nose was falling apart so badly by 1998 that he was called in to rebuild it with a piece of his ear.

The professor, a director of the renowned Bodensee Hospital in Lindau, on the German-Swiss border, built his reputation 'making beautiful noses' for celebrities.

He was asked to do the reconstruction work by Jackson's regular plastic surgeon, Dr Steven Hoefflin.

After flying to California to meet the singer,

Professor Mang found that the skin on his face was stretched parchment-thin and the tip of his nose was unstable.

'We decided that Michael Jackson, in reconstructive surgery of the nose, should get ear cartilage,' Professor Mang told American TV documentary-maker Daphne Barak.

'You make a cut on the skin of the ear and then you take out a big piece of the cartilage on the side. Then you make a cut on the nose and put the cartilage there. It's a wonderful material to reconstruct noses and repair them.'

After the two-hour operation, Jackson's nose was in bandages for about two weeks.

'The nose of Michael Jackson is now fine,' said Professor Mang. 'No silicone. It's ear cartilage and it will be okay.'

Jackson, 45, claims he has had only two plastic surgery operations - to help him breathe more easily and hit higher notes. But in reality he has had his face changed so much that Professor Mang said: 'Michael Jackson should never again have aesthetic surgery for the face. It's dangerous.

'I think Michael Jackson wants to change from a black man to a white woman.'

Professor Mang said early work on Jackson's face - a subtle slimming of his nose before he made the album Thriller in 1982 - was fine. 'Until then Michael Jackson was very good-looking and all was okay,' he said.

But he estimates that in the following years Jackson underwent at least another six operations at Dr Hoefflin's clinic.

'Steven Hoefflin told me that after each album Jackson had an aesthetic plastic surgery,' he added.

'He always came to Steven Hoefflin and told him, "Could I have a tattoo? Could I have the nose thinner?".'