A FAMOUS rugby league player's face flashed up on Dr Krishna Reddy's computer screen.

But to the cosmetic surgeon he was only one more patient - and one of an increasing number of patients from Warrington.

Bupa's Hospital in Stretton saw a 54 per cent increase in cosmetic surgery operations last year and Dr Reddy thinks more than half his patients are from the town.

But it is a quiet revolution. People do not want strangers to know about the operation. So our famous face will go unnamed.

DR Krishna Reddy is a specialist in ear, nose and throat surgery and mainly carries out nose jobs as part of a £4,000 package.

He does full-time NHS work at Warrington Hospital and does part-time work at the Bupa hospital.

"The human body fascinates me," he said. "That's why I became a doctor. I like fixing things - and I adore beauty."

His most common patients are women in their late teens and early 20s, followed by middle-aged women.

The younger patients often want to make a new start before university - one was a boy going to study law at Oxford.

The older patients have often found free cash after the children have left home and have decided to treat themselves after years of hard work.

But Dr Reddy said he does not operate unless the patient is getting the operation for the right reasons - and not in a vague hope it will change their life when their problems are more in the mind.

"You need to find out if the patient is expecting miracles," said Dr Reddy, who lives in Appleton.

Most of his cosmetic operations are to remove a bump.

But there are a wide variety of complaints: ill-defined tips, dual-tips, dips, flat roofs, protruding noses, lack of protrusion and more.

He had one picture from an NHS operation of the collapsed nose of a cocaine addict from Widnes. She looked like a corkscrew had been stuck in the side of her nose and given a good twist.

Dr Reddy said 85 per cent of operations are done with tools inserted under the skin - he likened it to going under the carpet'.

Rarer operations involve peeling the end of the nose back.

Patients are usually awake again only a few hours after going under the anaesthetic.

The bruising takes two to three weeks to go down but internal healing and all the swelling might take six to 12 months.

Dr Reddy said people occasionally ask what he has done to their eyes. He laughed: "It's not that the eyes got bigger, it's that the nose got smaller."

THE most popular procedures at Bupa are breast enlargement, eyelid surgery and facelifts. Dr Reddy said around two-thirds of his patients are women.

"Cosmetic surgery is growing exponentially at the moment and the idea that it's strange to get it done has absolutely gone," he said.

"Mostly people request subtle changes. They say they don't want strangers to notice, only close friends."

There are limits to the work. Thick skin does not adapt so well to the structural change below it.

Problems like a cleft lip can never be entirely hidden. And repeated operations can cause more problems than they solve.

Dr Reddy said he can spot pre-1995 nose jobs a mile away' but recent ones are getting harder and harder for him to see, even as an expert.

He was clearly proud and moved by tribute cards from patients.

He used to wonder why people scrimped and saved for an operation that to him seemed minor, until he saw the difference it made to people's self-esteem.

And he was thoughtful about the idea he was promoting the cult of beauty.

"I think we all know beauty is in the person, that superficial beauty goes out the window when you know someone properly.

"We all have less beautiful friends and family, but we love them don't we?" he said.