If you thought "Celebrity" Big Brother's Darryn Lyons was a little too podgy for his six-pack to be real, give yourself a gold star. "I had contouring done to my body," paparazzo Lyons told My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding's Paddy Doherty this week, taking off his shirt to reveal a set of washboard abs surrounded by, er, several pounds of flab. "Basically it's the male version of a boob job," said Lyons. "It's the bees' knees," commented an impressed Doherty.
How might one replicate these bees' knees? "That'll cost you between £4,000 and £9,000," says Marco Moraci, a cosmetic surgeon at the Harley medical group, who reckons Lyons underwent a procedure known as vaser liposuction. This involves inserting a metal tube into the abdominal area that destroys the surrounding fat and all but burns the skin, causing it to tighten and give abs better definition. "It works better for people who have already lost weight, and just need to lose small pockets of fat," says Moraci.
Those with air-miles to waste could always head to Brazil, where Moraci says surgeons offer a controversial muscle implant service. "Nobody has performed this procedure in the UK, because we don't think it looks too natural."
Meanwhile, those seeking a safer, cheaper route to a new-look body could always try selective tanning pads, as detailed by Glen Harden on Dragon's Den this summer. Simply place Harden's six circular screens over your stomach, hop into a tanning machine once a day for four weeks, and the contrast between the tanned and untanned areas will, he claims, create the illusion of chiselled abs.
Hmm. Perhaps we'll just stick with fancy-dress muscle vests – to be worn over or under your clothes, depending on personal preference, and available online from as little as £10. And there's always the gym. We hear sit-ups work a treat.
