10M TO VIEW ARABELLA'S
NET FACELIFT

Arabella Churchill's live facelift on the Internet is expected to be watched by up to 10million people.

The four-hour operation on Arabella, the 50-year- old grand-daughter of Sir Winston, will be the world's biggest-ever sponsored op on the Internet.

It is now planned to take place on St Valentine's Day next year. Organisers say that nothing will be hidden from the audience.

There are now six sites offering surgery on-line. Critics have dubbed the sites "the new bloodsport".

"``If there's an emergency with Arabella - God forbid - people will see it as it unfolds, we won't pull the plug,'' says Michael Sands of www.celebritydoctor. com which is specialising in putting celebrities under the plastic surgeons' knife on the Internet.

Arabella's operation, to be paid for by a skin products company, was originally planned for next month but she is now in Kosovo on relief work. "She has been away and we want her to rest so it's 99 per cent certain it's February 14,'' says Sands.

Arabella, who heard about the website through the Sunday Mirror, will be operated on in Chicago by Dr Steven Bloch.

She wrote to Sands: "My face has dropped a bit, I am a bit baggy under the eyes, my chin is pretty double chinny." She told friends that she wanted to lose some of her "family traits".

British doctors are cautious. Specialist Norman Waterhouse said: "I find this idea spooky and rather sad. Surgery is not a spectator sport."

Arabella's husband, Haggis McLeod, said at home in Glastonbury: "As far as we know she is still keen.''