CHANGING FACE OF STARDOM

OBSESSED Jacko went under the knife at least 20 TIMES as he turned to plastic surgery to escape deep psychological problems.

The star always denied ever having more than minor work done on his nose to help him breathe and sing better.

But renowned plastic surgery expert Dr Alex Karidis insists that his claims were untrue after a painstaking examination of the changing images of the star throughout his life.

His verdict after piecing together the jigsaw puzzle of Jackson's operations is that the singer's obsession with changing himself suggested he was "running away" from a damaged childhood.

And he slammed the surgeons responsible for turning Jackson into "one of the world's most operated people".

"I think he was a plastic surgery guinea pig to a degree," Dr Karidis said.

"I don't think it made him happy. It may have done at first but there were other issues. I think there's also an element of not wanting to get old - you could tell that by the way he dressed as well."

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The facial and skin changes that would lead to Michael being branded Wacko Jacko began with the arrival of his Thriller music video in 1983.

He had already had rhinoplasty in 1979 after breaking his nose during a complex dance routine.

The surgery left him with breathing difficulties. But now he also turned to surgery for cosmetic reasons.

In came the trademark single white glove - and suddenly the broad African American tip to his nose slimmed down. The tight curls of his hair were also chemically relaxed.

He would see his nose as far bigger than we would

Jackson later acknowledged this early surgery, but claimed the loss of puppy fat and clever photographic lighting was to credit for a general slimming down of his features.

The changes simply added to the mystique behind the phenomenon.

But it was when the next album Bad was released four years later that public ridicule for Jackson's clearly changing looks began in earnest.

His skin by now was noticeably whiter, his nose refined further with more surgery. A cleft had been sculpted into his chin.

The Bad video was spoofed by US comedian "Weird" Al Yankovic - the first time Jackson had been held up to ridicule for his looks so publicly since the jibes he endured from his father as a child.

Dr Karidis - who works at the Hospital of St John and St Elizabeth in London - told the News of the World the star must have had at least 20 operations totalling about £130,000.

GUINEA PIG: So many face ops

"To get from what he looked like in his youth to his looks before he died is impossible in one operation," he said.

"You have to stagger and evolve the nose. You can't shape the tissues immediately - it's got to be done over time. Plus his tastes changed.

"He started with a little adjustment there and so they did that, then he lived with that for six months and would decide to have another adjustment or tweak. And that's how it evolves.

"Someone like Michael Jackson looking in the mirror will see something significantly different to what you or I saw."

And according to Dr Karidis, Jackson has had at least SIX nose jobs alone totalling £50,000. "He would see his nose as far bigger than we would and was never satisfied and so he kept going and going," he said.

"You don't see noses like he or his sister La Toya have anywhere else - and they shared the same surgeon."

The wear and tear caused by the ops needed even more surgery to put it right.

In 2004, in a £10,000 op, cartilage was taken from the singer's ear to replace his nose tip after the skin reportedly "died". Jacko has also had three operations on his jaw at £6,000 each, new cheekbones costing £5,000, and his lips narrowed and widened in three ops totalling £15,000.

He also had two facelifts to remove wrinkles from his forehead and eyes costing £20,000.

But the singer always denied having skin whitening treatment, and blamed his pale complexion on a pigment condition called vitiligo, which destroys skin cells and can lead to white patches.

Dr Karidis reckons this is probably one thing Jackson WAS telling the truth about. "He must have had vitiligo, because you can't dye skin that colour," he said. "We have lightening creams but they don't work to that extreme.

"It's possible he could have used some of those creams because vitiligo is a bit patchy and he would have wanted to match up the patchiness.

"But he wouldn't have done that from the start. It would have been to blend in his vitiligo."

Dr Karidis blasted Jackson's surgeon - Los Angeles based Dr Steven Hoefflin - for allowing the singer to follow his wishes and become so hideously disfigured. He said: "It's hard for surgeons to play God. Are we in a position to say, 'yes, you can have that' or 'no, you can't have that'? We can't say who deserves what.

"But equally you can argue should his nose have been allowed to get that extreme - it didn't look human.

"Personally I wouldn't have been happy performing what he had done. For me to do an operation it's got to satisfy my sense of aesthetics, which I feel is well-rounded and conforms to being reasonably normal. I don't think anyone could argue his look did. It did after the first couple, it looked reasonably okay, and he should have stopped there. I would have done if I had been his surgeon."

Dr Karidis also blamed the late singer and Dr Hoefflin for tarnishing the plastic surgery industry, adding: "They did a lot of harm.

"People who wanted a nose operation would say 'I don't want to look like Michael Jackson,' as he put the fear of God into people.

"They thought if he had all that money and can go to the best surgeons in the world there was no point in them going.

"These surgeons have also harmed the profession. They can argue he is a customer and they will do what he wants, but they have damaged its reputation."

Last night leading TV psychiatrist Professor David Wilson backed Dr Karidis' view that Jackson's changing appearance had its roots inside his mind.

"Jackson is somebody who seemed to me to be body dysmorphic. He was very unhappy about his appearance, but he seemed to have an unhappiness that went deeper," said the professor from Birmingham City University.

"On the surface was the body and how he looked.

"But beneath this he was trying to change his outward physical appearance without dealing with what was really troubling him - and that was all the things that happened to him as a child."

Prof Wilson also said Jackson's life fitted the pattern of someone suffering from Peter Pan syndrome. "It's a complex that can be applied to older men who are emotionally and psychologically stunted or left in adolescence.

"The Eternal Boy often is in that state because of his inability to form an appropriate relationship with his father.

"And in a sense, the Eternal Boy has some positive things - they can be creative, youth-like, fun, spontaneous, and funny.

"But what they can't do is accept responsibility or order, they are not rational or reasoning.

"If you think about Michael Jackson's life he fits that pattern very clearly - in particular when he dangled his child from a hotel balcony. If you look at the photos, he thinks it is amusing.

"He is doing that to entertain and because he is being spontaneous.

"Of course adult, rational people think he has no concept about how that child could have been hurt - or how inappropriate it was.

"That inability to establish what's appropriate in his behaviour is evident in his belief that it was OK for him to invite children into his bed.

"People always want to talk about Jackson being weird. I want people to realise it was not weird, it was simply wrong.

Prof Wilson's work involves studying the behaviour of paedophiles - and again he thinks Jackson fits into a certain pattern.

"I would say he seemed to engage in behaviour that groomed children. He showered them with attention, gave them gifts and showed them pornography," said Prof Wilson.

"These are grooming practices, and I think we should have been far more willing to say that was what was happening and that it was wrong.

He was unhappy and not comfortable in his own skin

"He always struck me as a deeply unhappy man - someone who wasn't comfortable in his own skin, searching for some way of resolving problems he had had in the past.

"Other people in those circumstances would have used medication, therapy and counselling.

"But we gave Jackson a form of drug to overcome some of these problems - we gave him fame and celebrity. It was his way of dulling the pain of the unresolved relationship with his father."

He believes some of Jackson's problems stemmed from him being both a child star and an even bigger star in adult life.

"Some child stars will say the public only wants to remember them as children, and don't want to think of them as older people. Jackson broke that mould," said Prof Wilson.

"His fame also allowed him to gain access to children. Celebrity is a very dangerous thing. People who seek it out have to be careful to learn they have a tiger by the tail - and it can turn around and bite you.

"The price for him was he was able to avoid dealing with the reality of his life."

Jackson's looks and liking for young boys weren't his only obsessions in life - he was also obsessed with becoming a father and had three children.

Now he has gone - and their own futures have been cast into uncertainty . . .

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