The Guardian Unlimited – Sunday 26th October, 2000

“I am transformed into a six-foot-two Mint Imperial” – Richard E. Grant has a facial

By Jason Deans.

Richard Branson, Richard E. Grant, and Irek Mukhamedov indulge in treatments no longer reserved for the girls. Real men need looking after too, say Kathy Phillips and Nicola Formby. Photographed by Jake Chessum.

Wednesday morning at the Neville Daniel Salon. Asked by Tatler to have a beauty treatment and write about it (how could any grown man resist?). I arrive on the appointed day and am wheeled into the salon, opposite the back entrance of Harrods. Viki Nash, my therapist for the day, decides that seaweed is not ‘on’ and that a facial with gelatine verbena thermic mask and eye treatment is. Why no seaweed? ‘It’s not on offer to men,’ is the cryptic reply (and I have visions of hormonal havoc wreaked when the weed is dolloped down below).

So, trussed like a papoose, I have a headband strapped round my face by Viki, who is busily applying witch-hazel cleansing milk with such amazing fingerwork that thoughts of an impromptu marriage proposal float through my mind. That is, until I catch sight of my chops in the photographer’s lens and spy an elongated Norma Desmond reflecting back.

Viki now begins to alternate creams and lotions that feel warm then cool, then transformed menthol-perfumed and, right now, I am ready to take up permanent residence, such is the unalloyed pleasure of being stroked by professional stranger. I am transformed into a six-foot-two Mint Imperial.

Next, something like soft, scratchy sand is massaged in. Viki says it’s ‘to remove all those dead skin cells’. Once these blighters are given the short shrift, pads are placed upon the eyes and a warm gelatine verbena mask is speedily painted all over, not unlike being toffee-appled or layered in lemon curd. After which I am left to dry and set for 20 perfume-filled minutes, alone with the darkness of my own head.

When I come out of the Gloria Swanson-like coma, the verdigris mask is peeled off and abandoned, looking like something from The Exorcist. I, however, emerge as if from a chrysalis, transformed into a butterfly for the rest of the day.

How many men come for this kind of treatment? ‘More than you’d imagine,’ was Viki’s enigmatic reply.

Thalgo Spa at Neville Daniel, 25a Basil Street SW3 (tel: 0171 245 6151). Richard E. Grant’, treatment cost £35.