ONE of Britain’s leading gynaecologists will be seen standing in front of her bathroom mirror later this month dabbing antiageing cream on her crow’s feet as part of a new science project.

Professor Lesley Regan’s face will be photographed under intense light and the resulting image flattened and stretched across a frame so she looks like an upright trampoline, or the Cassandra character played by Zoë Wanamaker in Doctor Who.

Regan, 50, the mother of 14-year-old twins, was the first female professor of obstetrics and gynaecology in Britain. She runs a clinic at St Mary’s hospital in London and is regarded as one of the world’s leading authorities on miscarriages.

However, her new trial involves unravelling the commercial hype surrounding cosmetics to test which of the beauty firms’ claims can be trusted.

She has been filmed for a new series of Horizon, the BBC science programme, in a show entitled Professor Regan’s Beauty Parlour.

It may draw criticism that the BBC is dumbing down its science coverage. Other titles in the series include My Pet Dinosaur, based on the premise that prehistoric creatures were not wiped out by a meteor strike, and The Elephant’s Guide to Sex, showing naturalists using artificial insemination to help breeds facing extinction, such as the black rhino.

In the name of science Regan subjects herself to a detailed examination of every wrinkle, age spot and broken vein in her face. “I am going on a voyage of discovery,” she said last week. “It is me as a punter with a little bit of scientific knowledge looking at different products.”

She becomes the guinea pig in experiments to discover which cosmetics work and which do not, whether it is to fight wrinkles and cellulite or sun damage and balding.

“The fine lines and grey areas of our professor aren’t the only things under scrutiny,” said a BBC spokesman. One of the new “super cosmetics” being tested is the C-60 regeneration cream designed by Marko Lens, a professor of skincare and a plastic surgeon.

The cream costs £135 for a small pot and comes in packaging designed by Anouska Hempel, the former soft-porn actress turned hotelier and designer. It claims to have potent antioxidants that revitalise and replenish the skin and stimulate production of natural collagen.

Regan, however, discovers that a £15 antiageing cream performs just as well, if not better.

In other experiments she washes half her hair in one shampoo and half in another, and also questions how high she has to be to use “high altitude” lavender bath oil. “It is quite fun. I have learnt a lot,” she said. “You can read a magazine and see an advert for a new [skin-care] product saying it is a revitalising “ultra lift”, which tells you it is going to change the way you look.

“But then there will be a disclaimer in very small print at the bottom of the page or on the left-hand side disappearing into the spine saying it has not been proven to change your skin.”

She establishes that there is a strange paradox in the cosmetics industry. If a cosmetic product claims to work too well it could be reclassified as a medicine and be subjected to years of expensive medical testing. If it doesn’t do what it says on the tin, its manufacturers could be subject to claims of false advertising.

Her role is part of a facelift for Horizon itself. The show, which began in 1964, made its name with programmes voicing the first concerns about the harmful effects of the contraceptive pill and reporting pioneering surgery on the human skull.

It has not been without controversy. Programmes linking the spread of Aids to homosexual practices and recreating the murder of three children by a doctor suffering from paranoid schizophrenia were banned by the BBC as too graphic.

Andrew Cohen, the series director who is in charge of the overhaul, said: “I wanted to lighten the approach and I wanted to make scientists appear more human, more vulnerable and even funny.”

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