House (five)

Trading Faces: The Cindy Jackson Story (five)

I KNEW Dr Greg House wasn't well - a bad case of hay fever was my diagnosis - but did he really just ask: "Is it still illegal to do an autopsy on a living person?".

He's not exactly known for his sunny disposition, being more of a cynical misery guts. But the idea of performing an autopsy before the patient was dead was taking things too far, especially as the victim - sorry, patient - was a nine-year-old girl with terminal cancer.

Dr Wilson did his best to explain the procedure in layman's terms to her mother. "The plan is to reboot your daughter," he told her. "We shut her down and restart her". This computer analogy wasn't very helpful for those who think Windows let in light.

Andie, the young patient, was having hallucinations. When she was told she had a secondary form of cancer and a blood clot she didn't cry. House thought this wasn't normal. He decided that her bravery was a symptom and went rummaging around in the part of the brain associated with fear to find the clot.

The idea was to let Andie live a little longer. "Wilson thinks it would be nice to give the girl a year to say goodbye to her mother. Maybe she stutters or something," said House.

Killing Andie "for a little while" while they looked for the tumour worked. She gave Dr House a hug as she left hospital. He looked choked with emotion although more likely it was the effects of his bunged-up nose.

I bet that Dr House (so well played by Hugh Laurie that he fully deserved his Golden Globe this week) wouldn't give Cindy Jackson the time of day. She's achieved tabloid fame as a living doll, who's modelled herself on Barbie through years of cosmetic surgery - 17 years, £600,000 and 46 procedures to be precise. She's in the Guinness Book of Records as having been under the knife more than anyone else.

She looks good in a Barbie blonde sort of way but her addiction to cosmetic surgery strikes me as unhealthy. There's no doubt it is an addiction. From what she says, she's as dependent on perfecting her face and body as others are on cigarettes, alcohol or drugs.

She hasn't had so much have nips and tucks as structural alterations. Her biggest and riskiest procedure in 1995 involved having her chin bone reduced, cheek implants, laser resurfacing, a hair transplant and cosmetic dentistry. This meant sawing through and removing part of her jawbone.

It became clear that the reason for her obsession had little to do with wanting to look young and beautiful. She has issues with her late father, who wanted a son not a daughter.

She's spent her $100,000 inheritance on her surgery. He was a self-made man who, if he were alive today, would approve of how she's invested the money, she thought. Because, as she pointed out, she's quite literally "self-made" too.