I know it was vanity. But it wasn't really laziness; after all, since my last child was born three years ago I'd made Herculanean efforts to rid myself of my belly. Dieting, huge amounts of exercise, spot crunches, sit-ups, planks, side planks, you name it.

What had started off as a rather cute (sort of) pot belly had developed, with the help of four pregnancies, into a paunch. I wasn't overweight, and my midriff could be covered up with clever dressing, but bikini-friendly my tum was not. And so when the friendly stallholder at Chapel Market, North London, guided me towards maternity wear, I had just about had enough.

I remembered an article I had read by a journalist whose similarly stubborn belly was “melted away” by Smartlipo; she'd had it done in the lunch-hour in New York. Two weeks later, she wrote, she was patting her “concave” belly and flaunting herself in a new bikini. After a week's deliberation I booked a consultation at a private clinic in London, one of the top British places for Smartlipo. While waiting for my consultation I was handed a cuttings book full of similar testimonials. It was going to cost £3,000, but even before I saw the expert, I was sold. Yippee, I thought, I'm on my way to a concave belly.

“You are the perfect client for this operation,” said my man, a young Tim Robbins lookalike. To save his blushes, I will refer to him as Dr S. I was ideal because I was slim, he explained, with just a stubborn bit of “topical” fat. This would easily be vanquished, courtesy of Smartlipo. “Smartlipo doesn't work for fat people,” said Dr S. “I have to turn so many people away,” he sighed. Would he go through the procedure himself? “I certainly would,” he said, glancing down at his perfect body. “If I needed to.” And so I booked myself in for a “procedure”. There was a three-month waiting list. But I wanted the concave look now! “We'll call you if we get any cancellations,” said the office. A week later, they called. I could have Smartlipo tomorrow. I told them I'd be there. Was I going to tell Mr Millard about this? Was I hell. He would have a fit about the three grand, tell me that I look fine, and remind me what I should have known already. Which is that procedures that sound too good to be true almost certainly are. But I wanted my old body back, the pre-pregnancy body of a 25 year old, and I would give £3,000 to someone to bring it back. Anyway, I thought, while I was on the Tube feeling nervous. It will be over in an hour.

Dr S dived into my stomach with a laser

It was a rather nasty hour. Lying on a trolley, my belly anesthetised and covered with black incision marks, while Dr S, sleeves rolled up, made four incisions, each of about half an inch long, and dived into my stomach with a laser. Now, while this certainly wasn't painful as having a baby, or even having a tooth out, it was not pleasant and felt like I was being scraped internally by a knitting needle.

The idea is that the laser breaks up the fat, which is then drained away by the body. I could actually see the little red light on the laser underneath the skin, but I didn't open my eyes too much. I focused on deep breathing, while Dr S, beads of sweat breaking out on his forehead, inserted the long stick into each hole and ground his way around my belly. After an hour he sealed off the four holes with Steri-Strips, and I climbed off the bed, shaking a little.

A nurse bound me up with tight bandages and gave me a pink corset, which I was to wear for a week. Day and night. It wasn't very sore afterwards and I was so elated that I had got through the procedure alive that the first few hours were experienced via an adrenalin high. I was told to avoid strenuous excercise, but I did manage a Body Plate class that afternoon at the gym. Why? Who knows.

Appearing that evening with a corset on beneath my nightie, Mr Millard, genteel as ever, inquired on which sexual game I was about to embark. I 'fessed up. He rolled his eyes and was very nice about it. “You have had four children, I suppose,” was his unjudgmental judgment. “And if you hadn't had it, you'd always wonder whether you should.” A week later I took off the corset. My stomach was sort of flatter... maybe. Maybe having a tight corset on for 168 hours might have had something to do with it. Never mind, I thought, after two months I should see a result. That's when the fat “debris” would have been expelled by the body; apparently simply evicted by the usual methods. “Broken down by your liver” I think was how someone put it to me.

Or maybe that was in the piece I read too.

The trouble was that four months later, nothing much had changed. I still had a substantial gut. I went back to Dr S.

“I've got a new technique,” he told me. This time, he was going to suck the fat out. What's more, he'd do it free of charge. Told you he was nice. So, once more unto the breach went I. This time Dr S had his equipment rigged up to some sort of canister and a lot of transparent piping. Bang! In he dived, wielding the laser underneath my skin like a Star Wars light sabre. A lot of marshmallow stuff, tinged with pink, started oozing along the pipe. I was watching the expulsion of fat (along with a bit of blood). After about a litre's worth of marshmallow had been removed, the bandage and corset combo was back on and I was walking shakily back to the Tube, wondering how to break the news (again) to Mr Millard.

One would have thought that after not one but two sessions of Smartlipo, and fat removal, my stomach would resemble Keira Knightley's. Alas, no. Perhaps it is my age. Perhaps it is my lifestyle. You know how debauched journalists are. Well, maybe, but I spent six months training for, and ran, the London Marathon this year. In under four hours.

What a silly waste of money

Perhaps it is my genes. Anyway, what a silly waste of money; and what a potential risk, having an intrusive procedure done to my healthy body that was deemed necessary because I deemed it thus. I put the experience behind me and resigned myself to loving my tummy. Then I went on a press trip to St Tropez, where, lo and behold, I bumped into the journalist who had written the original Smartlipo testimony that had so encouraged me. And do you know what, she wasn't wearing a bikini.

“Oh, Smartlipo! It didn't work for me either,” she laughed. After I had picked myself off the floor, I asked her what she would suggest instead of Smartlipo. “There are cheaper, less invasive ways of getting a flat stomach. Do Pilates and yoga, and stop eating so much sugar and drinking so much. Then spend the £3,000 on a holiday!”

Well, she didn't put that in her article, but I am. And with a focused regimen of core exercises, alcohol abstinence and a healthy diet, you never know. You might see me in that bikini yet.

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