I splurged recently. As in, actually went out and parted with cash on moisturisers, which as a beauty writer still privileged enough to receive a regular supply of samples through the post, is probably the first time .. in a long time?  in years? Possibly EV-AH?

It all started with my friend’s skin: Sarah had a little glow to her face, a smoothness and transparency I was a tad envious of. It turns out she has been seeing a skin specialist, Frances Prenna Jones, who also takes the credit for looking after three of my other friends, all with flawless complexions, two of them beauty editors.  Some have a little extra help with needles and fillers and fixers, some don’t.  Sarah doesn’t need those.

I am a stubborn creature at heart, as my siblings and close friends will confirm. If someone tells me to try something, I’m usually so cross with myself for not discovering it first that I’ll put it off until refusing to do so becomes almost an act of counter-cultural revolution.  I am the last person in the whole wide world (why is it always wide? why never “tall”? )  to read Stieg Larsson’s Girl with the Dragon Tattoo because everyone else has already read it.  (It was the same for Life of Pi, only when I did finally get round to reading it, I couldn’t put it down, whereas GWTDT refuses to tempt me past about page 120).   So when the other girl friends with flawless complexions all told me they went to see Frances, naturally I didn’t go.

Besides, I already had been, years ago, before she had the deluxe Shepherd Market, Chanel-esque suite of rooms she now occupies.  When I went before it was to do a quick interview for something, I can’t even remember what, and she didn’t get to look at my skin. Opportunity missed. For me, that is.  She is a Doctor, a cardiologist in fact, but not a dermatologist, which some might see as a negative, but look how useful if you happen to suffer a heart attack while visiting.

So this time, I went, not exactly undercover, but as a paying customer.  Partly through curiosity’s sake, to see if I would get treated differently, and partly because I didn’t think it likely I’d be writing anything.  She didn’t seem to remember me (I like that line in American Beauty when Kevin Spacey says, “I know, I wouldn’t remember me either..”)  but I did subtly remind her we’d met before, it would have felt disingenuous not to.

And now here I am, writing about her.

Here’s what I like:

1) She wears super-high heels and can run up and down stairs in them.

2) She explains what she’s doing so fast it’s like listening to one of those speeded-up versions of Shakespeare or the disclaimer at the end of the radio advert telling you your investment can go up as well as down.

3) She doesn’t try to sell me her own product line at all; it appears, so far at least, that my skin doesn’t need it.

4) She asks me to bring in all the products clogging my bathroom shelf and promises to go through them all telling me exactly what will work for me, and what won’t.  Thus saving me money, and space.

5) She refuses to give me a peel on my first visit, saying there is no point.  It won’t work effectively until the products she is going to get me to try have been used for a minimum of four weeks.

6) She gave me a sample size of a serum to use.

7) The moisturiser she does sell me is by NEOSTRATA.. and get this, it’s only about £30 a tube. In America it’s about the same amount in dollars.  Yes, I know that’s more than a tub of Olay, but it’s far far cheaper by a mile than all the other doctor/skin specialist brands that I know of.  And, I swear, I noticed a difference the first time I used it, because along with the exfoliating cleanser I bought,  by Skinceuticals, (about £24) it was the right “prescription” for my skin as opposed to the other products I’ve been using.

Was it the moisturiser and cleanser combination or the specialist that “fixed” my skin?  I personally couldn’t have had the one without the other, but if you found a brilliant over-counter person, you might strike it lucky.

So there you have it.  Is it worth seeing a skin specialist?  Every once in a while, I think: yes. The money you outlay on visiting Frances (about £155 for a glyco-peel) is what you’d pay for a so-called miracle cream you’d buy over the counter, and that might not even be the right cream for you.

NeoStrata products are available from Dr Frances Prenna Jones, also from the Wigmore Medical Group, tel; 020 7491 0111.