Last night I watched a show that I can only describe as astonishing. How Young Can I Get? (BBC3, Wednesday, 9pm) featured a lady called Nicky Taylor. Over a two-month period, the 41-year-old single mum goes wholeheartedly into various anti-ageing treatments in a bid to turn back the clock.

In shows like this, I’m used to seeing a journalist going jogging, eating cabbage and stopping short at anything that could leave any thing like permanent damage. This show was different. This programme showed me a lady wrestling with her identity and stopping at nothing (even the advice of her mother and her children) to look a little bit younger.

Like I (sorta) said previous, I’m used to shows like this going only so far. Nicky ate nothing but cabbage for a week, nothing but apples for three days and danced around in a freezing chamber in an attempt to firm up the skin and lose a bit of weight. Now, it almost goes without saying that Nicky looked great before all the treatment… but that is rarely the point is it? So yes, it would be at this point where an investigative journo would stop. Nicky, a real woman with very real and worrying hang-ups, fully immersed herself into the murky world of the knife.

A course of botox injections and a chemical peel (as seen on 10 Years Younger) left Taylor wanting more and more. Staring at her belly (she’d had kids and was left with a cesarean scar) she wanted more. One trip to Malaysia later, and Nicky’s had half of her stomach cut off.

Trying to understand what drives a lady to having an operation for purely cosmetic reasons is something that I’ve often grappled with. In the case of this show, an attractive 41-year-old woman went against common sense and her child saying “it doesn’t matter what you look like… it’s what’s on the inside that counts” to undergo potentially fatal surgery, or an operation that could leave the flesh of her tummy dying, just to feel a bit better about herself. I understand that my last sentiment sounds a bit glib, but it’s not something I’ll ever be able to grasp.

Perhaps the most annoying thing about the show, and maybe one of the things that annoys me about women, is that when asked about the surgery, they rolled their heads back in horror and gravely warned Nicky away from these measures. On return and back to full health, they all ate their words and cooed at how wonderful she looked. The closest friend she had with any sense quipped “I can’t really tell the difference because I didn’t spend all my time looking at your tummy…”. This was a worrying programme looking at the serious mental problems of a lady who may well be on the addictive (and expensive) road to ‘self improvement’. [Mof Gimmers]