ANDREW WHITE discovers that the quest for perfection is not quite as painful as it seems...

UNLESS they happen to be Burt Reynolds or Brian Blessed, most men could probably be improved by a little judicious hair removal.

Some body hair is a good thing, of course, but it needs fastidious tending - otherwise your well-trimmed borders do tend to resemble sites of special scientific interest.

Women are well versed in the art of body hair maintenance, but men have been slow to cotton on.

Now, though, with David Beckham and other assorted Premiership footballers skipping around the pitch as smooth as new-born babes, not to mention the launch of Veet's new hair removal gel for men, the more hairsute of the sexes seems at last ready to cut the cord with his primitive ancestry.

As one of nature's hairier products - unkind references to Planet of the Apes were routinely flung my way during school PE lessons - I readily accepted Living editor Kate Thompson's suggestion that I submit myself to a professional back waxing.

I have had my back waxed once before, in an experimental fashion, by an obliging female friend.

It involved quite a lot of pain, plenty of raucous laughter - hers, not mine - and a mad dash to Tesco's when we ran out of waxed strips halfway through.

This time around I was in safer hands. Rachel James of Ocean Beauty has been tearing strips off people - literally - for 21 years.

Men in search of a smoother back or chest now form a substantial part of the salon's clientele, she informs me.

"You're the third one today," she says, heating a pot of honey wax and inviting me to lie face down on the treatment room trolley.

"It has become more and more popular of late. One or two men have it done because their girlfriends like it, but most are doing it for themselves - because they like the clean look, or it feels more comfortable."

As relaxing music plays in the background, Rachel gets to work with her spatula, spreading the warm wax in the direction of my hair growth before - there's really no going back now - smoothing down a papery strip and ripping it away in the opposite direction. It sounds violent - and it is. But Rachel works so quickly and efficiently that the pain is almost over before you've had time to register it.

After 20 minutes or so, she shows me my back in a mirror. It's now as smooth and gleaming, and as ruddily glowing, as a freshly deforested Alpine slope at sunset.

Having rubbed in some soothing tea tree oil and presented me with a sheet of aftercare advice, Rachel sends me on my way feeling like a new man - or at least a little bit less like an old monkey.

A chest or back wax at Ocean Beauty, 23 Burgess Road, Southampton, costs £20. For more information call 023 8078 9700.