Lynne Franks interview, copyright Victoria Mary Clarke 2002-06-06

            Lynne Franks is not afraid to learn by her mistakes.  And having been enormously successful all over the world in her public relations business-so successful that the Absolutely Fabulous television series is unashamedly modelled on her- she’s not embarrassed to share them with the general public.  Having cosmetic surgery of any kind is generally something that celebrities want to keep quiet about, but when Lynne underwent a series of botox treatments, to get rid of unwanted wrinkles and it all went horribly wrong, she decided to go public and talk about it.  Having botox, she says, was a big mistake, but she’s learned a big lesson from it.  Lynne laughs, when I mention Ab Fab, which is a relief, I was afraid she might be offended.  We’ve been having terrible trouble getting my tape machine to record our telephone conversations  and she points out that Mercury is retrograde at the moment, which is exactly the sort of thing one would expect Edina in AbFab to say.  Co-incidentally, she points out, Edina in Ab Fab had botox which went wrong in exactly the same way at exactly the same time that Lynne herself had it in real life.  Which was uncanny, because there was no obvious way they could have known what had happened. She doesn’t take offence, she says.  Why should she?  She’s a public relations guru and she knows that having a popular television series based on your lifestyle can only generate media attention for whatever you happen to be promoting.  ‘It’s opened a lot of doors for me,”she admits, ‘Especially in America.  So I’m delighted!’ 
But while Lynne was living in Venice Beach, California, she was introduced to botox.  ‘It’s tempting, when you live in California, because all of this stuff is just so accessible.  I was having lunch, one day, with a girlfriend and I commented on how smooth her face was and how young she looked.  And she told me she’d just had botox injections.  And as it happened, I went to my doctor for a skin allergy and they had leaflets about botox in the waiting room, so I asked the nurse about it and she said she’d had it and it was wonderful.  So I had a frown line in between my eyes and I decided, on a whim, to get rid of it with botox.”
But unlike Patsy and Edina, Lynne says she would never normally dream of trying the latest fad without having investigated it thoroughly, to see what potential dangers it might hold.  At first, though, she was happy with the results of the botox.
“My face was a little red and sore, but that went away and I was happy with the results, so I went back, three months later.”
  The next time she went, the doctor suggested that a few more lines could be treated, and Lynne agreed.  A week later, she flew to England .
“I didn’t notice it at first, having not looked in a mirror, but my family noticed  immediately that my right eye had dropped, and I looked like I had Bells’ Palsy.   So I rang the doctor and she said you aren’t supposed to fly within three days.  I said I had waited a week and to this day I don’t know whether it was the flying or whether her hand had slipped when she did the injections.  It took quite a few weeks to wear off completely and it was horrifying, actually.”
According to the FDA, botox is a protein, produced by the bacterium clostridium botulinium and can be injected into the muscles of the face to paralyse them, in order to create the effect of diminishing frown lines and wrinkles which occur when muscles are over-used.  Side effects are likely to include nausea, headaches, respiratory infection and Blepharoptosis, which is the drooping of the eye, which happened in Lynne’s case.  They have this year approved it’s use for cosmetic treatment of frown lines, although they recommend strict medical supervision.  Most of the cosmetic surgery websites suggest that the treatment  is entirely harmless, but botox is undeniably a toxin and because it has only been in use since 1989, little is known about the potential for long term damage.
Lynne takes her health very seriously and is now a Vegan.  She doesn’t drink or smoke but as she has pointed out, it is often the most health conscious people who work out and watch what they eat, who are also image conscious to the point of being willing to try things like botox which are potentially dangerous.
“  Of course we all want to look nice and make the best of ourselves but not to the point which it’s got to now, in our society where our self esteem is so low that we constantly have to keep working on our bodies.  It’s got out of control.  It’s become such a common or garden thing that people just go ahead and do it without thinking about it too deeply.’
Are all her friends doing it?
“I don’t know!!  But the average woman in the street seems to be rushing to do it.  And I have noticed people at dinner parties with very smooth faces.  It takes away all the expression and it’s not even that flattering, they just become Barbie-like.”
She believes it’s damaging to the psyche as well.
“I think it’s really important for us to work on ourselves from the inside and build self esteem.  We’ve got to the point of being obsessed with the exterior, you know big breasts are out now, so we all have to get our breasts reduced?  Britain as a market for cosmetic surgery is one of the biggest in the world and Ireland is probably the same.”
I point out that I know a lot of single women in their thirties who say that men are only interested in women who look young.
“Of course.  I’m single myself and I don’t have all the answers, but I do know that there is nothing more sexy than confidence.  French women know that, women like Jeanne Moreau.  And I was looking at Oprah Winfrey’s magazine the other day and they had an incredible spread of women in their seventies who looked wonderful and they were wearing their age as a symbol of honour.”
At the time that Lynne had the botox, she was in a relationship with an organic farmer, eleven years younger than her.  Was she doing it to impress him?
‘No!  He was horrified.  He loved me as I was and he didn’t want me to do anything to myself. I didn’t tell him I was doing it and he was very angry when he found out.”
That’s not why they broke up?
“That’s not why we broke up!  He did love me for who I was.  But I’m only just recently beginning to really love myself for who I am.  I don’t think we should blame men, it’s our own insecurities that make us do these things.  And if we get over it then maybe men will learn to love us for who we are.”
Lynne is currently teaching a ‘Wise Woman” series of workshops, to help women to build self esteem, find fulfilment, get in touch with their true selves and find beauty on the inside.  She will be in Ireland this Autumn.  Contact www.lynnefranks.com for information.