You won't lose face if your dinner table chat's cosmetic Los Angeles women are an accident-prone bunch. They'll turn up to meetings with mysterious strips of gauze adhered to their faces ("a little prang at the weekend - nothing serious"), peruse the aisles of Whole Foods looking like they've just stepped out of the ring with Manny Pacquiao ("an over-enthusiastic squash game at the club") and cancel dinners having suffered horrific allergic reactions to insect bites. Of course, everyone's fully aware that what's really going on are vast surgical overhauls. This charade would be less baffling if the lies weren't interspersed with bursts of cosmetic candour. "You're sweet," replied a friend's wife when I commented on how good she looked, "but that's only because I've just had my elevens done." "Oh, these aren't mine," a well-known actress once told me matter-of-factly, pointing to her hair and breasts. So far, I've gathered that having your "elevens" (the two vertical frown lines that appear between your eyebrows) Botoxed is socially acceptable, as are hair extensions, under-eye injections and breast implants. Men and women will blithely attribute their tans to "spraycations" and luxuriant locks to "some woman in India with much nicer hair than me." But admitting to any kind of liposuction, lip enhancement or "filler" would be enough to silence a dinner table. It gets even more confusing because the admissions themselves are often lies. "Nobody has Botox any more," laughs a friend when I tell her what I've learnt. If they're admitting to Botox, they've had a mini face-lift. Right. Best avoid all talk of cosmetic enhancement then? Not at all, she assures me. In the land of artifice nobody minds you pointing to facial/body parts and asking the question. Which explains why, when I had lunch with Joan Collins earlier this year and we found ourselves seated next to Kim Kardashian, Collins got up and introduced herself to the reality TV star with the immortal line: "Gorgeous lashes - are they yours?" When Priscilla Chan offered Mark Zuckerberg a stick of strawberry liquorice in 2005, the Harvard student couldn't have known that eight years later she'd be walking down the aisle with the Facebook Founder - oh, and that he'd be the 29th richest person on earth. And while it's true that it must have stung a bit when her fiancé popped out the day before the ceremony and floated his £66 billion company on the stock market (potentially saving himself billions in the event of a divorce), no doubt he'll make it up to her. One thing's for sure, bursars at the California hospital where Chan works as a paediatrician must already be flicking through defibrillator catalogues and choosing the font for "The Zuckerberg Wing." Funny the things that make me miss England. Something as silly as a P G Tips logo, Ken Livingstone's reptilian little face, or a press release like the one I got yesterday can be enough to set me off. Apparently Harpers Fitness - which runs more than 70 gyms and leisure centres all over the UK - have introduced "Queenacise": an aerobic routine inspired by our monarch's enduring trimness. Key exercises include "The Royal Squat" (lowering one's posterior into a sitting position and maintaining a straight back before returning to a standing position - repeat five times), "The Downward Corgi" (pressing one's hands and knees into the floor while keeping head, shoulders and spine aligned - repeat 10 times) and "The Wave" (holding one's raised arm to the side of one's body and, with a slightly cupped palm, rotating one's wrist - repeat 20 times). An hour's Queenacise is unlikely to leave Her Majesty in the same sorry state as the rest of us. According to her dress designer Stewart Parvin, the Queen doesn't sweat, perspire - or even glow.