Press Articles

Proving beauty is just skin deep

Evening News - January 23, 2001

Anthony Erian is a world leader in his field. He can take fat away, put fat back, smooth away wrinkles and tuck unpleasant folds out of sight.

When cosmetic surgeon Anthony Erian refused to give 15 - year - old Jenna Franklin bigger breasts he was instantly catapulted into the international media spotlight. Mr Erian said she was too young for the £3,250 operation, which was to have been her 16th birthday present from her parents.

Reporter Katy Edwards spoke to the Harley Street consultant oh his home turf - The Cambridge Private Hospital, in Wimpole.

For a man with so much power, he wields it very wisely. His work is underpinned by the strict aesthetic and moral code laid bare in the case of Jenna Franklin.

"They wanted me to operate on her, I said no and found myself in the news. To me it is a moral issue. Some people are too young. If you operate on the wrong patient you just get very unhappy people. I don't do these things. The sad truth is, other people may do."

Either he is a practised exploiter of British sensibilities or he truly believes what he says. Whatever the case, in distancing himself from his Hollywood "cut and run" counterparts, he has won the trust - and custom - of an altogether different, but more profuse, market sector.

Jayne Denton ( not her real name), 56, hairdresser from North London, splashed out on surgery worth £8,000 on her breasts, eyes and nose. She said: "I knew I had to have something done when the builders on the way to work used to shout out: Oi love, your bum looks 10 years younger than your face.

"Mr Erian has a very good eye for what something should look like, I've ever confidence in him and I tell my clients to go to him. It's important for people to know a good surgeon."

"The way I look is important to me, I work in the fashion industry with young, trendy people. I can't afford to look like an old woman."

Christine Straw, 48, who travelled from Ilkeston in Derbyshire to Cambridge for a £3,950 breast uplift (mastopexy), said: "He gives it to you straight. You hear a lot of disaster stories about other surgeons. I wouldn't go to anyone but him."

"If you don't need something he'll send you packing. Other people would take your money and run."

As president of the European Society of Cosmetic Surgery, with more than 20 years' experience in his field, Mr Erian flies all over the world passing on his specialist skills to colleagues of all nationalities.

His patient list includes a string of foreign royals, models and celebrities - his so - called "high - risk" patients, along with a myriad of "ordinary" people.

Demand for his skill is so high, Mr Erian can afford to be choosy about who he allows onto his table.

Nothing is implanted, tucked or uplifted unless it conforms to his very refined sense of beauty.

In a one-to-one consultation, he shows patients in a mirror the changes he intends to make, shooting down in flames any overly - ambitious notions. As he says, a surgeon can only work with the materials available to him.

"People need to understand I can't turn them into someone else. Some patients aren't very realistic in their expectations. It's a myth that they can walk in here and have whatever they want. They often don't need as much as they think. We believe less is more."

Cosmetic surgery, says Mr Erian, is all in the eye. A good practitioner can look at a face and instantly see what needs to be done.

"Science is from books, beauty is from the heart. I know something is right when I feel 'yes, this is beautiful'."

Anyone who has come up against Mr Erian in a wood carving competition will know he is telling the truth. His hobby of 15 years has won him a clutch of awards from the Association of Wood Carvers of Great Britain.

At weekends, he swaps the operating theatre for his bolt - hole studio in the grounds of the Wimpole home which he shares with his wife Susan and two youngest children Elizabeth, 13, and Abigail, 11, who go to school in Cambridge. The woodshed's shelves are lined with softly feathered swan's heads and dogs with meticulously carved eyes. "It's just therapeutic really, I love it. The carvings don't talk to you and if you don't like them you can throw them in the bin."

Advances in technology mean much of Mr Erian's work, including removing eye bags, double chins, or reshaping lips, can be carried out in a matter of hours under local or "twilight"anaesthetic, with patients allowed home at the end of the day.

Some procedures, such as Botox frown line freezing - to smooth away wrinkles - are walk in walk out jobs, but more complex operations, carried out under general anaesthetic, require an overnight stay in one of the hospital's eight beds.

Patients at the Cambridge Hospital are counselled for "suitability", to make sure they want to change their bodies for the right reasons.

"If you want it to please your boyfriend, then he may not be your boyfriend for much longer. You have to do it for yourself," Mr Erian said.

Jennette Gregory, 22, an air hostess from Harlow, saved up for nearly a year for £3,180 breast implants to boost her size from 34B to 34D - an operation which she will have to repeat every 10 years to stay in shape.

She said: "I used to be quite big but I lost a lot of weight and my breasts just shrunk. I want my boobs to stick out further than my belly!" Jennette will be banned from flying for four weeks as pressure in the aircraft could burst her silicon implants.

Mary Broadribb, ward sister at the Cambridge Hospital, said the surgery was a huge confidence boost to most patients.

More and more men are attracted to the quick-fix glamour of cosmetic surgery. The Cambridge Hospital's list includes a Cambridgeshire night - club bouncer unhappy with the shape of his nose.

A brief glimpse of Mr Erian's portfolio of before and after pictures dispels any notion that cosmetic surgery is sheer vanity or the exclusive domain of ageing starlets - for most of the patients, even heavy clothes would not have masked their disfigurements.

Mr Erian, who agrees plastic surgery in America has gone "too far", creating "cosmetic junkies", said: "Cosmetic surgery has always been a bit of a taboo in this country, it's a bit of a conservative society. It isn't a crime to look good. If people are born with deformities, why should they live with them for the rest of their lives? In the old days people would go to psychiatrists to talk about their image. Now a one-hour operation can change all that."

The hospital's future looks bright. Mr Erian and his wife Susan, a former teacher from Norfolk, who manages the business, plan to create new offices and consulting rooms, starting building work in March.

Mr Erian is also writing a book about the good and the bad and the ugly of plastic surgery, based on 25 years' experience, which takes a light - hearted look at the concept of beauty and rejuvenation.