Tim Whitfield-Lyne is not sure he can do the interview today. It's short notice and his flat is a mess. He could tidy up, but then there's the size. It's so small. Like a rabbit-hutch. He doesn't like seeing it himself, let alone anybody else.
Appearances matter to Whitfield-Lyne. When we eventually meet in a nearby hotel I can see he's made an effort. His faintly highlighted hair has been coiffeured with gel and he is clean shaven. But none of it works - he still hates his looks. Which is why he is on a quest for the perfect face: he wants to have cosmetic surgery to transform himself into someone comparable to a male model. Someone he describes as "classically good-looking".
The first thing that strikes you about Whitfield-Lyne is how attractive he is. Square-faced, with deep-set hazel eyes (when he's not wearing his blue-tint contacts), it's difficult not to offer reassurances of how fine - no, better than fine - his looks are. "This is something that I get a lot," he says, when I blurt out that I don't know what the problem is. "I think everybody expects me to be like Quasimodo or something. One eye up here and my nose down there."
Whitfield-Lyne is 32, he is studying web design and he has some home truths for anyone who questions his motives or sanity. "The reality is everybody judges everybody else on what they look like. There's that cliche of seeing somebody across a crowded room. Well, if you're ugly and vile they're not going to give you a first look, let alone a second. Having good looks opens more doors in life, it offers up more opportunities. I really believe that."
It's early days, but his "looks matter" mantra and his ambitions for a surgical transformation have not been well-received. When one news agency sent his story down the wires and around the world last week, he was sent hate mail from across the continents. "Freak" was the most common insult, but accusations of conceit and vanity featured pretty frequently too. Yes, he says, the enterprise is based on vanity. But his argument is it's more of "a negative vanity. It's not looking in the mirror and thinking: 'Wow, you look really great today.' It's quite the opposite. I look in the mirror and think: 'This isn't the way I want to look.' "
With a series of operations, Whitfield-Lyne thinks he can satisfactorily metamorphose. From the chin up, we're looking at a collagen injection in his top lip ("Just to fatten it up. To sort of bring balance to my top and bottom lip"), and fat removal from the area above his lip ("because it protrudes"). He needs work on his "sunken cheeks" ("obviously I want implants there"), and needs his eyes slightly widened ("I've got small eyes. Can you see?").
When it comes to hair growth, he wants his hairline rounded and moved forward so he can wear if off his face ("I can't at the moment because it looks slightly odd") and he wants laser hair removal on his chin ("How many men would love to wake up in the morning and never have to shave? I'm sorry Gillette, but that's the way it is.") He demonstrates these effects by puffing, pouting and pulling at himself. "Watch. Watch my face," he says as he drags his skin up and bloats out his cheeks like a bull-frog. "Yeah? Do you see? Have I proved that to you?"
When he can afford it he'd like to have cosmetic dentistry to level off his teeth and make them whiter. And if he had the money, he would probably have pectoral implants as well. But this is all in the future. For now he's focusing on the facial tweaks. He has done his sums and puts the total cost at around £20,000. To raise the cash, he's appealing for business sponsors. He is also in talks about having the process filmed for a documentary, conforming, as it does, to the British television's appetite for "unique social experiments".
"It's a bit of a test from my point of view," he says. "I want to look differently anyway, but if the latest cosmetic surgery techniques can be used to transform, OK, an average to reasonably good-looking guy into someone that is classically good-looking - such as a model - then that's a real experiment. Can surgery actually transform someone that dramatically but still look as natural as possible? I believe it can. I'm convinced of it, because of Cindy Jackson."
Cindy Jackson is the world's most surgically-enhanced woman, having knotched up a total of 38 cosmetic operations. Whitfield-Lyne evidently hero-worships her, telling me, at various intervals, how "drop dead gorgeous" and "ever so nice" she is. When he first came across her website he read it from page to page thinking how he totally related to this lady. A few months ago they struck up an email relationship and now Jackson is knee-deep in the Whitfield-Lyne project, serving as chief advisor and narrator to the possible documentary.
"We get on really well," he says. "People see her as a bimbo or an idiot but she's a member of Mensa. She's a very astute sharp woman, but she's also a very compassionate and lovely woman and she cares about other people and she advises people all over the world about cosmetic surgery. I mean, she really is a babe. She does modelling and everything."
Jackson also came to her disciple's defence during a recent appearance on an early morning chatshow, where much of the audience rounded on him for his intentions. Like many people he meets, the host was trying to find some sort of deep-rooted, psychological motive for the surgery. They focused on his adoption and proposed his actions imply he is trying to erase all traces of his natural family from his physical appearance. "That sort of stuff is absolute rubbish," he says. "I can't see the relevance there at all."
Neither can he relate to a diagnosis of body dysmorphia - an irrational conviction that one's body is repulsive. As I read out the checklist of "beliefs" for the disease ("no amount of operations will ever be enough to put things right"; "exterior appearance counts for more than personality"), Whitfield-Lyne dismisses them, claiming that he doesn't empathise with those tenets. "Personality is more important. But I don't think anyone can like me if I don't like me."
Go through pictures of idolised men with Whitfield-Lyne and it's easier to envisage what he deems attractive. Brad Pitt gets the thumbs up, as does Jude Law. But George Clooney only just passes the test ("he's OK - for his age") and, as for Russell Crowe: "Well, you wouldn't see him at Select modelling agency." All of which proves nothing except that he, like everyone else, sees appearance as a question of taste.
Will Tim Whitfield-Lyne become irresistible? Will he - as he so desperately wants - walk into a room and be deemed the most attractive man there? Probably not. But nothing anyone says will stop him trying. "I have an idea of what I'd like to look like," he says, "and if it can be produced - if I can prove cosmetic surgery works and that it can give someone a very, very attractive face - then maybe I am the male version of Cindy Jackson."
