Life's inessentials: The Facial Flex

Slippage. It's a word you'd associate with sodden slag heaps, perhaps, or shaky Far Eastern stock markets ... but your face? Facial Flex claims, laudably enough, to be an alternative to cosmetic surgery and, when compressed and released between the corners of the mouth 40 to 60 times a day, will deliver a 32 per cent increase in facial firmness and a 250 per cent increase in facial muscle strength.

Nevertheless, those of you slack of jaw and flabby of jowl, still labouring under the guilt of New Year exercise regimes yet to be begun, need not add the face to your sum of neglected body parts. The Facial Flex may suggest a terrifying new aerobic world of nose jerks and cheek thrusts, but the word on the street is that the body fascists aren't about to start taunting us with "nostrils of steel" along with "trim tums" and "pert bottoms".

Facial Flex, pounds 49.95 (call 0990 502082 for stockist details)