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Face off [Northern Echo (England)](Northern Echo (England) Via Acquire Media NewsEdge) A North-East father recently became a TV celebrity because of his looks - but not in the way you would think. Barry Nelson talks to Leo Gormley MOST people would be nervous about appearing on primetime national television. And for Leo Gormley, being featured on a programme called Beauty and the Beast: Ugly Face of Prejudice presented particular problems. Leo, 59, bears the very visible scars of an appalling accident which happened when he was 14. While doing a holiday job in a clock repair shop, petrol used to clean the mechanism of timepieces ignited and inflicted terrible third degree burns on his hands, arms, legs and face. After more than 120 operations to try to repair the damage and years of being stared at by strangers, Leo, of Sedgefield, County Durham, has accepted the way he looks. He has even become the Northern spokesman for Changing Faces, a national charity which campaigns to challenge negative attitudes to facial disfigurement. When a film company asked Changing Faces to provide someone to take part in Beauty and the Beast, Leo took it in his stride. "We were worried about the name of the series. They kept telling us it was a working title, but as time went on the name stuck, " says Leo. Playing the part of "the beast" opposite an attractive young woman contemplating cosmetic surgery would seem to be insulting by anyone's standards. But Leo can see beyond the title. "The series gives us a national television platform to get our message across to millions that appearances are not everything, " says Leo. A passionate opponent of cosmetic plastic surgery, unless there is a good medical reason, Leo wants people to think seriously before going under the knife for trivial reasons. "What illustrates this is a conversation I overhead on the Tube in London between a girl who wanted to have a nose job and her mate. She was crying because she couldn't afford to have this operation. I wanted to tell her that her appearance is not such a big issue. Her very last resort should be cosmetic surgery, " he says. Leo spent hours helping to make the six-part series, which started last Wednesday. In the first episode - the only one in which he appears - he spent most of his time trying to convince 20-year- old Yasmin not to be so obsessed about her looks. Yasmin, who has very large J-cup breasts, is desperate to have plastic surgery to reduce the size of her bust. While he is fiercely opposed to purely cosmetic surgery, Leo accepts that in Yasmin's case, she could justify breast reduction on medical grounds. It is society's increasing obsession with using cosmetic surgery as a way to enhance the way we look that gets Leo really mad. "What is happening now is that people are having a holiday which involves having plastic surgery in somewhere like Thailand or some Eastern European country. "People go off an have a facelift, have their teeth fixed, have a boob job, but some of them come home and, six months later, end up knocking on the door of the NHS and asking them to put things right, " says Leo. He finds it hard to understand how people without serious disfigurement can put themselves through such an ordeal for vanity. "People who have had cosmetic surgery on their eyelids have lost their sight because of infection. It is so sad and so unnecessary, " he says. When asked about his childhood accident, Leo patiently explains what happened. "I had a holiday job fixing clocks in my home town of Enneskillen in Northern Ireland. I absolutely loved it." He can vividly remember what happened when an oil lamp accidentally ignited petrol used to clean the mechanism of clocks and watches. "The whole place was engulfed in flames and I fell backwards and hit my head on the concrete floor." He crawled away from the flames on his hands and knees, which resulted in terrible injuries. His burns were so severe that doctors did not expect him to survive the three-hour journey to the nearest burns unit. But he did survive and he spent the next four months undergoing a series of operations. Scarred for life, Leo credits his family and friends for helping him to come to terms with how he looked. In a statement on the website of Changing Faces, Leo says: "I realised that if I stood tall and confident, looked people in the eye and ignored the stares, people would eventually accept me for who I was." Leo, who has lived in the North-East since 1979, has had a successful career as an engineer, a senior manager for a multi- national telecommunications company and has run his own business. He has been married to Nicky, 49, for 19 years and has two daughters, Alex, 18, and Molly, 11. LEO says he is so relaxed about the way he looks that he can even joke about the source of some of the skin grafts on his face. "I used to tell the kids that when they kissed their dad they were kissing my bum because that's where some of the skin grafts came from." He takes great pleasure in pointing out that his family and friends no longer "see" his facial disfigurement. The people I know well tell me they just don't notice it any more. I am just Leo to them." But he continues to do his best to promote the message of Changing Faces, speaking to groups all over the North of England. His message on the Changing Faces website reads: "In our modern world, where individuals are increasingly obsessed with their looks, an acceptance of individual differences, and a true tolerance of diversity are important components of a civilised society. My own hope is that one day everyone in society will be comfortable with their appearance, whether or not they have a disfigurement." If more people get the message, Leo doesn't mind going on television, anytime. Beauty and the Beast: Ugly Face of Prejudice is tonight, at 8pm, on Channel 4. (c) 2011 ProQuest Information and Learning Company; All Rights Reserved. |