Katie Price has revealed that she has regular Botox injections not because she thinks she needs it, but 'because everyone else has it done'.

'Botox isn't a big deal for me, it's like going shopping,' she said.

Having had Botox, I can confirm that it is indeed very much like going shopping, in that it is painful, expensive and can leave you full of self-hatred and regret.

I was offered free Botox injections many years ago and, being naturally vain and occasionally exceptionally thick, I was unable to refuse the offer to have years erased from my face.

As Katie Price says: 'I'm not particularly wrinkly' (although in her case, presumably she has no idea whether or not she actually is, having had Botox injections for years) but being even less wrinkly sounded like a good plan.

Sitting in a dentist's chair cranked back to the missionary position as a man attacked my face with a syringe filled with botchulism, however, didn't feel like quite such a good plan.

Asking what other cosmetic procedures I might also benefit from also ranked highly on the scale of Very Bad Plans Indeed.

The list was so long that its word count would have rivalled the Bible.

I had to sing 'Muffin the Mule' at deafening decibels in my own head when the practitioner began to explain just how he'd fill in the lines near my mouth ('are you good with pain?').

There was a point when I was asked what kind of 'look' I was after. I explained that on a scale of one to Macbeth's hags, I was hoping to have the complexion of a Weeble.

Smooth as an egg, the ravishes of time defiantly frozen to the point where the staff in Sainsbury's would ask me for ID if I tried to buy a butter knife.

I lost count of how many injections I had, but it was quite a few.

My forehead looked like a pinboard in a students' common room once you've removed all the posters about free condoms, drug counselling groups and a plea for people not to abuse the coffee machine by stealing the miniature milk cartons and throwing them from the fourth floor of the humanities block at Year Sevens.

In fact, I think my bloodshot forehead marked the beginning of My Great Quest: namely to decide whether or not I should have a fringe.

Having a fringe when you've just had Botox in your forehead would have been extremely handy, even if it had stuck to the blood and required a chisel to remove the hair from the skin.

Not having a fringe when you've just had Botox is like advertising the fact that, despite looking like an ambulatory compost heap, you're shallow enough to think a few less wrinkles might tranform you into a James Bond mistress.

As it was, there was no mistaking the fact that I had entered into the murky world of cosmetic surgery, however hard I tried to persuade people that I'd actually fallen head-first into a hedgehog.

In my bid to both entertain AND educate, I shall offer a quick glimpse into the perplexing world of science to explain the mechanisms of Botox.

Botulinnum toxins block the signals in your body which would usually command your muscles to contract, and you can't wrinkle if you can't contract.

On this note, under no circumstances should you have Botox in your lungs in order to make them look more youthful – if the toxin attacks the muscles in your chest, you'll stop breathing.

This will, ironically, stop the ageing process immediately, albeit in a manner that you may not entirely appreciate.

After a few days, the scales (or scabs) fell from above my eyes and I was delighted to see that my forehead was entirely, bizarrely, wonderfully wrinkle-free.

Not that you could tell that I was delighted, because I was swiftly unable to register any emotion whatsoever.

Raising so much as an eyebrow would have involved hiring a forklift truck or Geoff Capes.

I almost had laminated cards made up so that the children could decipher the way I was feeling: 'Mummy is angry!' 'Mummy is surprised!' 'Mummy has just stood on a plug and has one of the pins embedded in her foot!' Additionally, I felt a gigantic weight on my shoulders for having undergone a cosmetic surgery procedure while raising an impressionable daughter – what message was I giving out to her? – although this was probably more to do with the fact that I was carrying about six stone of botchulism in my forehead.

It took at least a year for the full effect of the Botox to wear off, during which my facial expressions crept from Stepford Wife to Mick Jagger in stealthy increments.

I did not go back to have my troublesome line next to my mouth filled with concrete – having no facial expressions is one thing, not being able to lever your mouth open wide enough to eat a Wham! bar is quite another.

•This article was original published on October 24, 2011