Suddenly her husband starts shouting and pointing at her face. The cuticle around her mouth had dropped off like a single shell onto her bosom. Everybody was staring at her but she just said, ‘this is wonderful, look at my new skin!’”As signs of ageing are not always confined to the face, Montague-King emphasises the need to work on other areas. Necks are always a giveaway and a while ago, he says, he did an enzyme treatment on Oprah Winfrey’s. He also does hands, fighting hyperpigmentation or “liver spots” by massaging in a natural melanin inhibitor “I’d really like to get my hands on Madonna,” he says. “I feel she can be helped, she still has quite a lot of mileage in her left.”The Dann?oncept was born out of Montague-King’s childhood affliction of acne “I was a pizza face as a young man,” he says.

“I used to cover it up with a horrible product which would crack if I moved my face, so I never smiled and everyone called me the death mask kid.” He began reading up on plant extracts and ended up with a PhD in biochemistry and botany.King is now 58. His face is tanned and tight; you wouldn’t say he necessarily looks young for his age, more that you wouldn’t have any idea what his age was meant to be. His hair is dark and today he’s opted for turquoise contact lenses. He updates the photo in his publicity material every couple of years, so his followers can track his ageing process.In America, alongside his treatments, Montague-King has also made something of a name for himself as a mouthpiece against the cosmetics industry, or “the bogus companies that are taking a lot of money off people under false pretences.” Montague-King estimates that 95 per cent of over-the-counter cosmetics don’t actually do anything “America is a very litigious country,” he says. “They’re not going to put anything totally active in these things because they don’t actually want to make any changes because people can misconstrue changes in their skin as allergies. When I was covered in acne, I knew things could be done beyond the conventional things that were being done. I’ve always felt that most physicians become lazy once they’ve finished medical school and just become puppets for the drug companies.”Each of Montague-King’s enzyme treatments costs about £100 a go, and to receive the full benefit, clients will need to have between three and six sessions “We’re not appealing to the masses,” Montague-King says “Obviously it’s people who have money that will go.

I’ve played my dues I’ve done a lot of research and I’ve taken in a lot of people in with a lot of horrible problems.”For more information, call Dr Montague-King’s London clinic on 020-7486 7983. As a folk cure, garlic is as old as the hills. Its antibacterial and antiseptic qualities are well known, and it is a trusted traditional remedy and preventative for colds. But garlic’s powerful odour means that it is not the most sociable of plants, and harnessing its healing properties – even in supplement form – can be a problem.But the latest research not only provides impressive proof of garlic’s role in preventing colds and flu; it may also have found a way to maximise the healing properties of garlic’s active ingredient, allicin.
Allicin is a compound formed when two chemicals – alliin, an amino acid, and the enzyme allinase – react. In the clove, these two remain in separate compartments, only coming together when the clove is crushed. Allicin is a powerful anti-fungal and anti-bacterial agent, and the stuff of health supplement dreams.But the problem with garlic supplements is that often the actual amount of allicin in the capsule is negligible, or even non-existent. Peter Josling, the director of the Garlic Centre, who headed the new research, says that the chief difficulty lies in the means by which most manufacturers process their supplements.

Garlic powder supplements are generally agreed to be the most effective – allicin is activated by liquid, so the makers simply combine alliin and allinase in a capsule and let the body stimulate a reaction with its own fluids The problem is that stomach acids render allicin inactive. Some manufacturers try to solve this by coating their tablets, but there is still a high chance of the compounds breaking out in the stomach. As a result, it is thought that most tablets actually yield less than 1 per cent of the allicin they claim.This is where the new research comes in. Researchers from the Garlic Centre believe they have found a much more effective way to deliver allicin to the body. Building on Israeli research, the team found that a dilute solution of allicin could be formed by crushing fresh cloves of garlic in controlled conditions and putting them through a flood reaction system. “Aquaeous extracts are much more active than oil,” Josling explains, “so when the liquid is spray-dried, you are left with a powder that contains only allicin.” And because allicin is slightly acidic, the possibility of its coming into contact with stomach acid no longer remains a problem.To test the effectiveness of this form of allicin in preventing colds, the Garlic Centre conducted a double-blind placebo-controlled study with 146 volunteers. At the end of a three-month period, 65 people had had colds in the placebo group, while only 24 of those who were taking allicin (brand-named Allimax) had succumbed.