What I’m not so keen on is having scorching wax dribbled onto my face, then ripped off with what feels like Scotch Tape.

Yet, this was my punishment for vanity after I let my wife talk me into going for a facial.

Call me naive, but I imagined it would be a calming, tranquil experience.

Images flashed before me of cool cucumbers over the eyelids and contented housewives nodding off to the soulful strains of amorous whales serenading one another across the ocean.

Never in my blackest nightmares did I imagine being trussed up like a Christmas turkey and tormented with an arsenal of terrifying implements that felt like they’d been shipped straight from Guantanamo Bay.

First, the auntie who ran the beauty parlour asked me to lie on a bed. So far so good, I thought. If lying down were a sport, I’d be an Olympic athlete.

But no sooner had I begun to relax than I was jolted from my reverie by the unpleasant sensation of slippery, weird smelling oil being slathered over my forehead as if it were a bodybuilder’s torso.

Worse was to come. My tormentor vanished momentarily before re-emerging from her back-room lair pushing a trolley packed full of potions and what looked like home improvement tools.

Please, not the Scotch Tape!

I flinched as I felt the hot wax bite. Yet it was nothing compared to the pain as the grinning beauty therapist superglued strips of cloth to my exposed skin then tore them away with a nonchalant flick of the wrist.

I’ve never been a particularly religious man, but as I felt the adhesive clamp itself around my delicate eyelid like the jaws of a Venus Flytrap, I actually found myself praying.

I’m not saying the beauty therapist did a bad job with my facial.

After all, my wife trusts her with her life.

But being poked and prodded by a complete stranger is simply not my idea of relaxation. I’d much rather spend the day sitting in a pub or coffee shop with a good book and a bottle of Tiger.

It’s not like there was even anything wrong with my skin in the first place. OK, it’s always been a bit red, but what do you expect from an Englishman living in the tropics?

A girl once told me I had very big pores. I had no idea what she meant, but took it as a compliment.

I’m even less of a fan of massages, especially ones I haven’t asked for.

The other day, I was having my hair cut when the male hairdresser suddenly put his scissors down and started kneading my shoulders with his stubby fingers.

Now maybe I’m just old fashioned, but when I go to the barber I expect him to concentrate his efforts on my head.

If my shoulders were covered in hair, it would be a different story - he could give them a short back and sides.

But thankfully, most of my hair still resides up top. So as far as I’m concerned, the rest of my body should remain firmly out-of-bounds.

Just try telling this to your average overzealous freelance masseur. I was on holiday in Bali recently when I spied my wife lying on the beach as three old crones hovered over her like the witches from Macbeth.

One was massaging her feet, another was doing something to her head, while the third clutched a bottle that looked like it might contain the eye of a newt or the toe of a bat.

My wife seemed to be enjoying herself, so I lay down next to her to sleep.

Just as I was dozing off, I felt an icy touch on my neck.

It was one of the weird sisters, come to claim another victim.

'Massage, massage,' chanted the old crone as she stroked me with her scaly talon.

I politely declined, only for her friend to come over and do exactly the same thing. In the end, I had to go surfing just to get away from them.

It was either that or hire an exorcist.

I know that I’m in the minority when it comes to massages. You probably love them, and why not?

For millennia, those healing hands have brought calm to many a tense shoulder blade.

For an expat with a phobia of massages, moving to Singapore was perhaps not the most obvious choice.

Although I have no figures to back this up, they seem much more popular here than in my native Britain.

There are parlours everywhere, some of which look like they offer a lot more than just beauty treatments.

But what I don’t understand is why the masseur usually feels the need to say something like, 'Wow, you’re so uptight. Just feel all those knots in your shoulders. You need to relax more!'

If I was already relaxed, I wouldn’t need a massage, would I? Anyway, I can’t think of anything more likely to stress customers out than ordering them to be calm. It’s a bit like trying to fall asleep. The more self conscious you are, the harder it is to actually do it.

Which is why I’ve given up on 'soothing' beauty treatments. Relaxation is all well and good, but sometimes it can feel a little too much like hard work.

But despite the growing backlash, one particularly sordid and unethical journalist has so far managed to escape unscathed.

Don't be fooled by his boyish charm and innocent looking white dog.

This amoral hack thinks nothing of breaking into homes, stealing private property and hounding innocent members of the public halfway across the globe to get his grubby little hands on a scoop.

Worse still, he's been doing it right under the noses of Singapore's cinema-going public.

Yes, if you're looking for an example of the gutter press at its grubbiest, look no further than Tintin.

Hergé's chubby cheeked adventurer may seem harmless enough, with his comfy sweaters and baggy brown slacks. In reality, he's even more slippery than the Brylcreem on his pointy ginger quiff.

If you've watched this cartoon baddie in action over the past week or so, you’ll know exactly what I mean. First, he sneaks into the home of Mr Ivan Ivanovitch Sakharine – illustrious descendent of the celebrated pirate Red Rackham. As if that's not bad enough, he violates the poor man's privacy even further by trying to pinch his model ship.

The Gallic gum-shoe goes on to illegally intercept Mr Sakharine's telegrams, before harassing him again and again – eventually following him all the way to Morocco. He even tricks a drunken sea captain into helping him plumb the depths on behalf of his downmarket rag Le XXe Siècle.

All the time, he has the cops in his pocket – in particular, two bumbling English detectives who seem more interested in tipping him off than solving crimes.

Had mobile phones been around in 1930s Belgium, Tintin would no doubt have hacked them too.

Forget Hugh Grant – if the British media ethics inquiry wants a glimpse of the true face of tabloid harassment, what better witness to call than the long-suffering Mr Sakharine?

To be fair, Tintin has a number of defences up his knitted sleeve. For a start, he's not real. And even if fictional characters were included in the rogues' gallery of disreputable journalism, our boyish Belgian may not even be the worst offender.

What about Lois Lane?

The brunette bombshell is without doubt the world's least observant reporter. How she failed to notice that Clark Kent looks exactly the same as Superman, but with glasses on, we'll never know. Had Britain's privacy-hungry celebrities only thought of the spectacles trick, they could have saved themselves all those long nights spent fleeing the paparazzi.

Anyway, Lois is definitely not above using her looks to snare a story. The ultimate honey trap, she does her best to flatter and cajole her way into Superman's pants – worn outside his tights, of course. Meanwhile, all she really wants is to unmask his true identity, although she never stops to ask whether this gross invasion of his privacy is in the public interest. What's worse, I've not seen her get her notebook out once.

Lois has only one real rival when it comes to fictional hackettes – the Daily Prophet's Rita Skeeter. Yet although this dastardly reporter from the Harry Potter series has many loathsome qualities, I have to admit I quite like the fact that she works for a newspaper with pictures that move. Yes, when it comes to new media journalism platforms, our Rita's well ahead of the game.

Which brings us back to reality, and her creator J.K. Rowling, who gave evidence at the inquiry last week. Given what she told the panel about her own experiences at the hands of the media, it's obvious that Rita's character is not quite as far fetched as people may have assumed. In fact, some might say the real life hacks are even more devious than anything a novelist could dream up.

Whatever your take on Britain's tabloid scandal, as more and more shocking allegations emerge, one thing's becoming increasingly clear - in the world of newspapers, truth really is stranger than fiction.

It was no secret that the British soul diva with the towering beehive hairdo and even bigger talent had been fighting a losing battle against various addictions.

Her best known song was titled Rehab and the press had cruelly nicknamed her Wino – a reference to her debauched lifestyle, which was fuelled by a destructive on-off relationship with her junkie former husband Blake Fielder-Civil.

But there was another reason why her tragic death – which was recently found to be due to alcohol poisoning – had an air of inevitability about it. She was 27. That’s the same age as Kurt Cobain, Jimi Hendrix, Jim Morrison and a host of other legends whose untimely demise earned them a place in the infamous 27 Club.

And although there is no statistical proof that a person – musician or not – is more likely to die at this particular time of life than any other, the apparent glut of overdoses, suicides and car crashes has led to the idea of a curse entrenching itself in fans’ collective consciousness.

In one sense, there is nothing at all mysterious about these rock and roll deaths. Amy Winehouse was killed by alcohol, Hendrix died of asphyxiation after mixing pills and red wine, and Cobain was in the grip of heroin addiction when he blew himself away with a shotgun.

Given their devil-may-care lifestyles, it comes as little surprise that a 2007 report found pop stars really do die young.

Two years after achieving fame, they are more than twice as likely to go to their graves prematurely as ordinary people in their demographic, said the survey of 1,064 successful musicians by Liverpool's John Moores University.

But what makes 27 such a seemingly common age for rockers to shuffle off to the great gig in the sky?

When people reach their late 20s, they 'start to face a lot more stress with work, starting relationships and pressure from families', says Dr Munidasa Winslow, Adjunct Associate Professor of Psychological Medicine at the National University of Singapore. 'They are also expected to be ‘grown up’ and deal with problems and issues as they come along...not always easy if they have not had good role models.'

Dealing with growing older is hard enough at the best of times, but imagine the havoc it could play with the psyche of a pampered rock star expected to live a life of constant excess while saddled with a fragile self-image based mainly on adulation by strangers. When illegal substances are thrown into the mix, things can get even more chaotic.

'Drugs and alcohol enable artists to live in a fictional world and sometimes they can get trapped in it,”' says Dr Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic, Reader in Psychology at Goldsmiths, University of London.

Perhaps it is this conflict between the pressures of growing up and a desire to cling on to that rebellious, creative edge that drives so many rockers off the rails in their late 20s. Then again, the “curse” could be nothing but a self-fulfilling prophecy.

After Kurt Cobain’s suicide in 1994, his mother Wendy was quoted as saying: 'Now he’s gone and joined that stupid club.' Was the Nirvana frontman consciously following in the footsteps of his tortured rock god idols? We’ll never know, although one thing is for sure. The myth of the 'stupid club' goes back a long way.

First to join was Robert Johnson. The legendary Mississippi bluesman is said to have had his whisky laced with poison by a love rival in 1938. Then, after lying dormant for more than 30 years, the curse apparently re-emerged with a vengeance.

Rolling Stone Brian Jones drowned in his pool in 1969, followed in quick succession by the deaths of guitar hero Hendrix, singer Janis Joplin and The Doors’ drink-addled frontman Jim Morrison, whose girlfriend found him slumped in a Paris bathtub in 1971.

But it was not until after Cobain’s suicide more than 20 years later that the 27 Club captured the public’s imagination, spawning websites and even a book.

What impact could all this death and destruction be having on impressionable fans? 'So many young people aspire to be rock stars, and youths in particular can feel they have a special relationship with the rock star or band that they follow,' says Professor Mark Bellis, who led the 2007 study on musicians’ life expectancies. 'We need to ensure such relationships do not include the promotion of health-damaging lifestyles.'

Of course, for most rational adults, the idea of singers being stalked by a curse is pure fantasy.  Sceptics point out that some of biggest names are conspicuously absent from the club – including King of Rock and Roll Elvis Presley, who left the building at a relatively elderly 42.

Yet too many fans and aspiring stars continue to be seduced by the dangerous myth that drugging yourself into an early grave is somehow glamorous. What they rarely see is the true, sordid picture of physical and moral degradation, grieving families and impressionable youngsters spurred on to throw their own lives away.

In an ideal world, the legend of the 27 Club would serve as a warning to wannabe rock gods. Sadly, however, its ghoulish allure shows no sign of fading.

As fans of Amy Winehouse wait for their tears to dry, we can only grit our teeth and hope she will be the last of the young stars that burn so brightly, only to be snuffed out forever.