The deeper the cut, the younger you look - Angela Wilkes reports on the Mask

Scalping settlers may have been a gruesome business, but it was relatively simple, according to Jan Stanek, a cosmetic plastic surgeon. Once the knife had sliced through the skin, fat and fibrous tissue down to the membrane covering the skull, the scalp would 'lift up and peel off quite nicely'.

Mr Stanek is intimately familiar with the process. He will be using just such a deep incision himself, not to remove his patient's scalp, but to separate a good proportion of the upper face from the bone in a revolutionary new type of cosmetic face-and-browlift. It is called the Mask - or, slightly less chillingly, the Extended SubperiostealFacelift. Mr Stanek is hortly to perform the first such operation to be carried out in Britain.