Room for improvement

Stephen Armstrong was the last person you’d catch anywhere near a spa. That is, until someone told him he looked like uncle Albert

I like to think I’m a civilised man. Indeed, I think that’s pretty much how you’d describe me if you met me – nice enough bloke, nothing remarkable, average build, reasonably bright but definitely civilised. And ‘civilised’ comes from the ancient Greek word for ‘city’. So the moment we stopped lying around in mud and smearing ourselves in plant juice – well, that was progress as far as I’m concerned. Which is why I hate spas.

In your average spa, it seems, you get dunked in slime, rolled in ooze and squirted with steam all day long – spending so many hours in pools of varying descriptions that you might as well be a frog. There’s a reason we evolved, is all I’m saying, and we should take the hint. What greater thrill can there be than the roar of city life?

And yet… recently I’d noticed that the adrenaline had been pumping pretty constantly. What with one thing and another, I wasn’t feeling quite myself and was even getting a few sleepless nights here and there with work whizzing round my brain. Then, one night, my friend Dan was complimented on how young he looked by a girl in a pub. When I was introduced to her, she suddenly laughed out loud: “He looks like my uncle Albert.”

It was clearly time for expert help. Could I be stressed? Apparently so. “For men, the first sign of stress is probably insomnia – unable to get to sleep or waking up early and being unable to get back to sleep – and self medicating with increased alcohol consumption or other drugs,” says occupational physician Dr Paul Litchfield. “Women tend to go to the doctor if they are depressed or anxious, while men go to the off-licence.”

And the uncle Albert thing? “Men’s skin is thicker and stronger than women’s, which means the effects of ageing take longer to show,” explains Dr David Orentriech, the dermatologist son of the founder of Clinque. “But men tend to have more active lives, so wrinkles, blotches and flaky patches all come through in most men’s 30s.”

No way would ‘stressed and old’ work as my pitch on an internet dating site. Something had to be done. And so, before you could say ‘shallow, vain hypocrite’, I was hurtling through Surrey to Grayshott Spa in the hope of… well, a miracle.

At first sight, I have to confess, I felt a little alarmed. Grayshott was founded in the 1960s in a slightly gothic-looking mansion house outside Haslemere, and arriving at dusk underlined its potential as a location for a haunted house movie. Then the cab driver cackled like an evil imp: “That place is dry, you know,” he grinned. “People climb over the walls to get a drink in town. You only get hot water and grapefruit for dinner.” You could hear my scream in Edinburgh.

At check-in I was relieved to find the place isn’t dry any more, although the cabbie would have been right a couple of years ago. Anne Robinson, Roger Moore and Judi Dench are regulars, and a welcome book includes the former James Bond recalling secret missions into town to liberate lowcarb Champagne. Fortunately, the wine list now includes a more than acceptable Sancerre, which saw me through my three-course dinner and beyond. Indeed, as they cleared the table I asked to take the fella up to my room in an ice bucket. Wellness begins within, I reasoned, and my poor old stomach shouldn’t go unmassaged.

Come sunrise… alright then, 10ish… I galumphed downstairs in my dressing gown. Although it felt slightly unusual to be striding a mansion in a towelling robe (I was wearing my smalls, you understand – I’m not Scottish) there was definitely a certain Hollywood rehab chic to the look.

Libby Petschel, Grayshott’s assistant manager, met me in the treatment anteroom and explained the problem with people of my gender. “Men tend to come to a spa just wanting a massage,” she sighed. “But there’s so much more you can do. You can exfoliate – getting rid of dead skin, cleanse pollution from deep in the skin, moisturise, all sorts of things. So we have a body treatment that gives you all of that with the massage you’re expecting.”

At which point a blonde woman called Vicky took me into a darkened room and told me to undress. Now, I may not know much about spas, but I know what I like. And I did like this. There were lots of bits to the treatment, for one thing. A sort of spiky cream rubbed all over my body for a start (exfoliant with lemon, salt and oil, apparently). Then a shower. Then a back massage. Then a leg and body massage. Then a gel rubbed into the muscles that felt slightly cold but refreshing – like an early autumn day. Then Vicky wrapped me in a foil blanket – “to keep you at the right temperature so that all the treatments soak in” – covered my eyes with something soft and lavendery and gave me a scalp massage while I tried not to drift off to the plinky plonky music. Another shower and some hot towels followed.

By the time I wafted out of there, I was sporting the kind of ethereal smile that I assume saints must have as they bless people. I drifted benignly around wishing there were things I could bestow. I thought about the pool and the Jacuzzi and the gym and stuff, but it all seemed a bit too real. For a good few hours, I actually floated. Even though the laws of physics tell me that can’t be true.

Reading about my second treatment – the Guinot Hydradermie Facial for Men – shocked me out of that when I saw it involved electricity. On. My. Face. Surely there’s something in the Geneva Convention about that? Vicky soothed me on the way in to a different darkened room. Apparently,

I wouldn’t feel a thing; it would remove layers of pollution and dirt, help the anti-ageing treatments soak right in and get rid of my wrinkles. “The effects last around a week,” she said. It being Dan’s birthday at the weekend, I told her to wire me up.

I can report that having electricity on your face isn’t quite the Guantanomo experience I’d expected. Rather, it feels like someone touching your face with a warm spoon. The various anti-ageing potions do actually make your skin look younger. Being a bloke, I had to be sure, so I rang microbiologist Tom Mammone, who told me it was because they tricked my skin into making extra collagen – the elastic building protein which stops your skin from wrinkling.

So there I was. Relaxed and rested with a few less wrinkles – albeit with the same grey hair and cynical sneer. No one had put seaweed on my head or sprayed me with mud at any point in the stay. Although it’s never entirely comfortable to have your prejudices dismantled, I had to admit it was all, well, very civilised.

Stephen Armstrong writes for the Sunday Times, GQ and Esquire