Faye Winter tells of ‘terrifying’ weeks before Love Island due to botched Botox

Reality TV star Faye Winter has said it was “pretty terrifying” to be subject to botched Botox treatment in the weeks leading up to her stint on Love Island.

It comes after Scottish and UK ministers announced plans to cut down on “cowboy” cosmetic procedures by introducing new restrictions on who can access and provide treatments.

Winter, 30, who appeared on the STV dating show in 2021, said the Government is taking “a massive step in the right direction” and added that the NHS should not be covering the cost of corrective treatment for botched surgeries.

Speaking about the weeks leading up to her Love Island appearance, she told STV’s Good Morning Britain (GMB): “It was pretty terrifying. I wanted to look a certain way. I wanted to look the best version of myself, knowing that I was going on national television.

“I went to somebody to do my Botox that I hadn’t been to before, and he told me that he was medically trained. I believed him, as so many of us do.

“I later found out that he was a property developer, and he had put too much Botox into my forehead, meaning my full forehead just had nothing in it. I couldn’t move it and it was fully relaxed.

“It was paralysed, and I literally had to wait it out, not knowing if it (the feeling) was or wasn’t going to come back.”

Winter explained that her forehead “had relaxed” and that her eyelids and eyebrows had “drooped”.

The Scottish Government has said it will take steps to crack down on “cowboy” Botox, fillers and cosmetic surgery procedures.

The plans mean dermal fillers and the use of Botox will have to be supervised by a qualified healthcare professional, while “breast and buttock augmentations” must be carried out by a qualified professional and won’t be available to under 18s.

The UK Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) has also said that steps will be taken to protect people from “rogue operators” with no medical training who often provide “invasive” procedures in homes, hotels and pop-up clinics.

The DHSC also said the move to introduce new restrictions will reduce the cost imposed on the NHS to fix botched procedures.

Winter added: “I think obviously it’s a massive step in the right direction. This is only for four years I’ve been speaking about (it).

“So for the Government to even acknowledge it is amazing. But there’s also parts of it that I do think, where they say, you know licences… what are they going to look like?

“Does somebody just need a passport number at a UK address and they still get a licence? We don’t know what that quite looks like yet, and I think it’s really important that we know those finer details.”

Speaking on whether the NHS should pay for corrective treatments, she said: “I don’t think that we as taxpayers should be paying for that. I never asked anybody to pay for my correction work, and that was on me, and I had to learn the hard way.”

Winter was on series seven of the STV dating show Love Island and was seen coupling up with Teddy Soares.

Before the proposed regulations come into force, the Government has urged people seeking cosmetic procedures to ask for the provider’s qualifications and insurance, and to be wary of “suspiciously cheap” offers.

It comes after health officials launched an investigation after a number of people had reactions to Botox injections earlier this year.