I AM, generally, a low-maintenance woman. A little bit of lippy for a night out, a few packets of disposable razors to get me, or rather my legs and armpits, through the summer and, occasionally, some clumsily applied polish on my toenails is just about it.

I find beauty salons intimidating. All those glossy, over made-up therapists look eerily clinical in their white coats. And some of the services on offer sound so off-putting. Weren't depilation, oxygenation and electrolysis experimental treatments in Victorian mental institutions?

I feel ill at ease because I don't understand it. Like the fresh meat counter in the supermarket, which sends me into a blind panic because I don't know a shank from a brisket, beauty salons are places I have always avoided.

It is much less complicated to buy my meat shrink wrapped, pre-weighed and priced and to carry out all my beauty treatments in the privacy of my own bathroom.

But this week, a few high-maintenance friends, who regularly have manicures, pedicures, sun-tanning sessions, leg waxes and coyly-named "bikini waxes", persuaded me the time had come to give my body, or parts of it, a treat.

I could never risk taking my children to the zoo, they warned, in case the rhinos tried to mate with my tough-skinned feet. "Wouldn't you like lovely soft feet like ours?" said one, twiddling her perfectly-painted toes, peeking out of a pair of dainty summer mules, at me.

"My pet hate is hairs on my top lip," said another. (She couldn't bring herself to use the word moustache.) "I couldn't cope without my monthly top lip depilation."

And so I was booked in for a pedicure and a lip job. "Fiona is lovely, she'll make you feel really relaxed." They were right. But I felt sorry for poor Fiona as she worked away with what looked like industrial sandpaper, to scrape the dead skin from my feet.

Next came the top lip. A strip of hot wax was applied and peeled off. It hurt. Fiona warned me little red spots might appear over the next week as the skin was so sensitive. She advised me to treat it like an "open wound" and apply antiseptic cream several times a day.

So, in order to get rid of a few stray hairs, I end up smelling of antiseptic with an open wound and red spots all over my face?

Fiona persuaded me to book a leg wax before I go on holiday. But, she said, I had to let the hairs grow for two weeks before she could wax them. "We need a good growth to have something to go at," she explained.

So, as well as the wound on my top lip, I now have to walk around with hairy legs for two weeks - and all in the name of beauty?

MADAME Tussauds has shaved great slabs of wax off Geri Halliwell's original model because she has lost so much weight. I suggest they hold onto them as Geri's punishing fitness regime and severe diet, which includes injections of vitamins to give her energy, can only lead to one thing - huge weight gain once she weakens, following months of denying herself so much of what she enjoys.

BARRY George's father cannot understand what turned his son into a killer. "He is my son and I love him," he says, unable to believe his boy could have murdered Jill Dando. But Alfred George left home when Barry was seven to move in with another woman and her daughters. Since moving to Australia when Barry was 14, he has had little contact. With this background, did he really think his son would grow up to be a confident, well-balanced member of society?

MARY Archer easily dismisses her husband's infidelities, saying he would "not be the first aspiring politician to have the odd fling". She sounds like an unemotional observer, not a wife. She is clearly not angry with Jeffrey, just indifferent, which must make him feel much worse.