The first £80,000 ‘CoolSculpting’ device has arrived in Britain and is already being offered to patients at a London clinic.

Liposuction – where fat is sucked from the body – is big business for cosmetic surgeons and has overtaken breast enlargement as the most popular type of plastic surgery.

The new treatment costs around £800 – about a quarter of the price of liposuction – and takes between one and three hours. The treatment, which is non-invasive, can be carried out in a patient’s lunch break.