Mecca Bingo Celebrity Column – Dramatic New Looks!

Hello and welcome to this week’s not-to-be-missed celebrity column, brought to you by Mecca Bingo. You can play bingo online here at Mecca and catch up with the latest celeb goings on in our weekly column. This week we’re taking our lead from Britney and talking dramatic new looks…

Everyone’s been talking about Britney Spears and her bold new look this week, or should that be bald? In a fortnight that has seen the once squeaky-clean pop queen in and out of rehab more times than we’ve played online bingo (and that’s a lot), the most surprising development was her decision to shave all her locks off and reveal a new bald-as-a-coot look. With hairdressers reluctant to perform the task themselves – presumably for fear of future recriminations if Britney came to her senses – she grabbed the clippers and hacked away herself. Rumours for her motivations for this brave new look have been flowing freely, with many saying that it’s just another sign of her decreasing emotional state, while others have theorised that she shaved her head following threats from estranged hubby Kevin Federline to get her hair tested for traces of drugs in order to gain custody of their children. Whatever her motivations, her hair will grow back. Whether her emotional health can be fixed so easily is a different matter of course. At the same time, Britney got a couple of tattoos – not so easy to reverse.

There are stars for whom a couple of tattoos and a shaven head would be small fry compared to the changes they have undergone. We’re talking of course about plastic surgery: friend to the rich and famous the (western) world over. Whether it’s for reinvention purposes, to ward off the inevitable march of time or before the celeb in question was even a celeb – the number of stars who have succumbed to the surgeon’s knife is huge. Sometimes the results have been a success, sometimes they haven’t…

The Good, the Bad & the Ugly

Plastic surgery can do wondrous things to revamp the careers of women approaching a certain age it would seem. For Anne Robinson however, it was the other way around. The Watchdog presenter had already been enjoying increased exposure fronting the hugely successful The Weakest Link for some years before she went for a full face lift and more than one dose of botox. And it is most likely this exposure that led her to go for the procedure in the first place. Being in the limelight is a sure-fire way to give anyone reason to scrutinise their appearance. The change was noticeable to all and Anne came clean about her face lift and botox, saying she had made the decision because she didn’t want a ‘face like a road map”. Since then Anne has enjoyed continued success and certainly looks younger than her 62 years. But is it the same if everyone knows why?

Another female celeb who has made huge changes to her appearance and makes no secret of how, is the fabulous Sharon Osbourne. Dowdy looking and overweight in the 80’s, Sharon looks like a different woman these days, thanks to a facelift, liposuction, tummy tuck and a whole string of other operations. Sharon’s career has soared since her dowdier days too; she is now a successful television presenter/judge and is equally as well known as her rock star hubbie Ozzy. Of her plastic surgery Sharon has said “I love cosmetic surgery. I don’t mind getting older, but if it all started sagging, I’d have the whole lot done again.”

Not all plastic surgery stories are happy ones however. Sometimes the stars get it very, very wrong and Leslie Ash is the perfect example of this. Instead of being the beauty enhancing procedure she surely thought it would be, her lip augmentation left her looking swollen and odd and the butt of many a tabloid joke about her “trout pout”.

Another famous trout-pouter we couldn’t possibly miss out is the infamous Pete Burns.  As well as his ridiculously inflamed lips, this 80’s singer has had cheek implants and more than one nose job. An ITV programme entitled Pete Burns’ Cosmetic Surgery Nightmares focused on his botched lip job and in January 2007 Burns announced that he was planning to sue the surgeon who carried out the procedure.

Going to show that sometimes it’s best to leave things well alone. Perhaps plastic surgery is a bit like life, which is apparently a bit like a box of chocolates – you never know what you’re gonna get…