He started out modestly enough — by just wanting a different nose. In the end, after up to 100 procedures, he was desperately trying to repair the damage done by reckless and botched operations and injections.

Michael Jackson, surely the most infamous example of the perils of cosmetic surgery, spent 30 years trying to achieve his idea of perfection.

Some friends said he was modelling himself on Diana Ross, others that he just wanted to obliterate all resemblance to his hated father.

A new TV documentary about his surgery addiction reveals he was so nervous about the initial rhinoplasty (nose job) that he persuaded his older sister La Toya to act as a guinea pig.

Miss Jackson, 58, said: ‘He wanted to get his nose done . . . he kept saying: “What do you think? What do you think?” I said: “Michael, if that’s what you want, if it’s gonna make you feel better, get it done.”

‘He asked me: “Can you be the guinea pig for me? Can you get your nose done and let me see how it looks, and if it hurts?” ’

Once satisfied with the results of La Toya’s operation, Michael went ahead with it himself in 1979.

Seven years later, he also persuaded a friend and fellow plastic surgery devotee, Hollywood hair stylist Steve Erhardt, to be the first to experiment with a cleft chin operation.

Erhardt claims Michael’s plastic surgeon told the singer that he needed a chin ‘like Kirk Douglas, something very masculine’.

After Erhardt’s new chin was revealed, Jackson went on to have this operation several times.

Despite his initial nerves, Michael also had Botox, fillers, bleached his skin, had cheek implants and lip augmentation. He changed the shape of his nose to the point that it was so narrow the airways were blocked.

Body dysmorphic disorder expert Dr Eda Gorbis — who believes Jackson was suffering from the illness, where sufferers have a distorted view of their appearance — has claimed he had as many as 100 procedures.

Eventually his original features were almost completely obliterated, as was his ethnicity.

But the documentary’s most heartbreaking revelation is a computer-generated image of how the star could have looked had he left his face alone — an attractive, contented black man with a warm smile.

• The 10 Faces Of Michael Jackson, 9pm on February 11, Channel 5.