LyfeStile: The Secret of Good Skin is Mud - By Style Editor Leonie Lyfe

Mud, mud, glorious mud. Nothing quite like it for...improving your skin tone. Following TV's Jerry Helliwell's surprising discovery of the healing powers of the brown stuff, and a whole list of celeb endorsements, Mud clinics are springing up all over the place. There might be one near you - assuming you live in a fashionable chic neighbourhood that is - and I doubt that.

Helliwell discovered that her skin was surprisingly refreshed after falling into a muddy ditch during a Dutch dike vaulting tournament. "Initially I thought I was just soaking wet and covered in sh*t but after I towelled off I felt so much better. And that was that. The inspiration to start a whole new health fad. I just got some celeb friends to rave madly about it and we were off."

Mud treatments are nothing new, but Helliwell insists that the real secret is in the mud itself. "We use mud dredged by the bucketload from the tidal marches of the River Blackwater at Maldon in Essex." I asked why Maldon? Especially as she'd discovered the secret across the sea in Holland. "Well....Maldon Salt is supposed to be superior and so, I thought, a bit, that the mud from there might be just as good. And...as for the connection with Holland, well my geography teacher said that we are virtually connected to Holland. The Thames estuary is just one massive sand bank and if the sea level dropped just 10 foot, you could walk all the way to the Netherlands. Err...I think that's it."

So, in the interests of a freebie, your intrepid LyfeStile reporter decided to give the magic Essex sludge a go. It does have a bit of a seaweedy aroma, but after an application on my face for half an hour, I was told I looked 30 years younger, and offered a jelly baby by mistake. I must say that once the mud was removed I did feel a lot better.

Sceptics say that it is all mumbo-jumbo, but I'm not so sure. Well a dozen celebs can't be wrong, can they?