This doctor's in vogue

It's not often that you go to the doctor's, see a copy of Vogue in his office and discover that he's in it. But Dr Mosaraf Ali, doctor to the stars, has already carved out such a reputation for himself, that the latest issue devotes four pages to his pulling power. He's billed as London's answer to Hollywood's New Age guru Deepak Chopra, his "patients" include Kate Moss and Geri Halliwell, and Prince Charles has written the foreword to his new book, for goodness sake.

So what is his secret? It certainly isn't providing plush surroundings - his New Cavendish Street office is more like a cheap chain hotel room - but Tara Palmer-Tomkinson calls him "the eighth wonder of the world personified". Selina Scott believes that "if Hippocrates had needed a doctor, he would have sent for this man" and Vogue's Christa D'Souza concluded that "if there's any name I'm going to be dropping this spring, it's going to be Dr Ali's".

He's booked up for the next three months, has 10,000 patients worldwide, including the sultans of Brunei and Oman and the Malaysian royal family, and reckons his secret is simple: "Work hard, show results, and the word gets round."

The sharply-suited 48-year-old claims he offers his patients something completely different. It's called "integrated medicine" and it fuses traditional, complementary and conventional disciplines. Teresa Hale has been offering the same thing, for the past 14 years at the Hale Clinic in W1, but the celebs just love the Dr Ali approach.

Isabel Goldsmith, daughter of Sir James Goldsmith, says: "It makes all the difference. He keeps me healthy." Selina Scott agrees: "I saw him when I was very run down. He told me I was eating all the wrong food, so he took me off all dairy products and gave me some foul-tasting powder. The crux of the matter is that his treatments work. He gets it right."

Born in India, he trained as a doctor in Delhi and Moscow, before branching out into Ayurveda, homeopathy, hypnosis, iridology and fasting therapy. He worked at the Hale Clinic in 1990 - but left in 1998 to form his own practice. He now works alongside an assortment of doctors and therapists who will look after everything from your chilblains (designer Nicole Farhi: "I had frost-bitten fingers. After three sessions, Dr Ali had restored the blood circulation completely") to your chakras, giving your colon a good seeing-to along the way.

A session with Dr Ali takes 30 minutes, and costs £55 (£50 for subsequent visits). For this, you get "a top-class consultation, and we have a huge turnaround as we get people well very quickly."

He starts the consultation by taking my pulse. He grips my right wrist, looks intently into my eyes and announces that I've just finished my period (wrong), that I get headaches on the right side of my head (not true) and that I'm intolerant to coffee (who can tell?). However his manner is so confident, and he stares at me in such a hypnotic way (Hong Kong entrepreneur David Tang describes it as: "Dr Ali's eyes laser through the unhealthy parts of us"), that I'm almost inclined to agree with everything he says. If he had a second-hand car to sell, I'd buy it on the spot. He then examines my tongue for further clues (for example, a red tip could mean I'm eating too many sweets and chocolate), and assesses the skin for signs of excesses or vitamin deficiencies. He believes that most conditions respond well to herbal remedies plus simple lifestyle and dietary changes.

A few of the evils in Dr Ali's world include coffee, alcohol, yeast, puddings, fizzy water - and if he asks a patient to cut something out of their diet, he'll expect them to do just that, no matter how famous they are. "They have to, otherwise I'm not the doctor for them," he says. His stern manner has led some of his well-heeled patients to comment on how a consultation resembles "being back in the nursery".

He combines the best of conventional medicine, with complementary principles. If he thinks you have a brain tumour, he'll book you an appointment with a leading surgeon. But, like a growing number of people in this country, Dr Ali believes that healthcare should be about prevention, rather than patching up symptoms - and he has devised a lifestyle programme to kick-start the body's natural healing systems. This recommends eating well, lots of sleep, plenty of water, yoga, regular massages, meditation and good hygiene - hardly revolutionary stuff.

However, among all the commonsense advice, there is the occasional oddity - he suggests, for example, that vomiting after a heavy meal can be a good way of getting the excesses out of your system. And there can't be many doctors who recommend a combination of yoga and pomegranates to help you get pregnant.

Was I impressed by my half-hour with Dr Ali? Well, I was blown away by his confidence. But it irritated me that he preferred to lecture, rather than listen. And he is a terrible name-dropper (typical sentence: "I met Sarah Miles, when I was treating her husband, Sir Robert Bolt, and then she introduced me to Ava Gardner, and she introduced me to Uri Geller ..."). But if you'd like a doctor with a gold-plated stethoscope, you'd better get in line.