Beautiful Boys (ITV1)

WHO'S a pretty boy then? Well, Dean Jackson for one. Looking good means as much to him as it does to customers at his hair and beauty salon in Durham.

"You could call him obsessive," suggested girlfriend Kristie, as she manicured his nails.

He's not alone in spending money on the high body maintenance but does take longer than most. The average British man spends 55 minutes getting ready to go out, while Dean takes two hours - and that's only to pop down his local for a drink.

Dean was one of the Beautiful Boys, the latest offering in TV's - and viewers' - preoccupation with looks. The difference was that this was an exclusively male perspective.

Once men were happy to follow Henry Cooper's dictum to "Splash it all over". Nowadays men go much further than a spot of smelly on their body. We followed a landscape gardener spending £7,000 on a facelift, men in their twenties paying £300 for botox injections, and a 34-year-old sales manager handing over £2,500 for love handle liposuction.

They're not isolated cases. Forty per cent of cosmetic surgery in this country is performed on men, and the male grooming industry is worth £700m a year.

Men have always been vain, it was suggested, but now they own up to it. Beautiful Boys didn't show us anything we hadn't seen before. That didn't lessen the agony of watching male stripper Chris Kimber undergo a £75 BSC - as in back, sack and crack job to remove hair from everywhere (and I mean everywhere). He was interviewed as wax strips were applied and then ripped savagely from intimate areas of his body. It brought tears to the eyes and a protective hand to the crotch.

Narrator Rhona Cameron was clearly having fun describing the procedures, gleefully informing us during Mick's facelift that the surgeon was "sucking out fat from the chin that would be used to inject into his wrinkles". Doesn't sound very nice put like that, does it?

When Alan had liposuction, she noted that over a litre of fat was sucked from his love handles and stomach. Before the operation, he patted his bulging midriff and said, "I believe I have a six-pack hidden under there". He dropped a shirt size following the treatment, but the difference wasn't that apparent.

The most drastic alteration was seen in psychiatric nurse Liam, who spent £3,250 having his "hawk nose" reshaped. These days 30 per cent of nose jobs are performed on men.

Afterwards, his nose was noticeably smaller but the biggest change was achieved cheaply and painlessly - he had his long hair cut into a modern style. He did indeed look like a new man. If he'd gone to the barber's shop first, he might have saved money on his nose job.