For the next two weeks I had to do most of my drinking through a straw and could only chew properly by holding my lips closed with my fingers.While it is a physical nuisance, the palsy’s real impact is psychological: the sense that, with your face all lopsided, you have somehow lost your identity.Over the years I have done all sorts of weird and humiliating things, from working as a stand-up comedian to handing out leaflets on Oxford Street dressed as a giant tomato. The morning I discovered I had the condition I went downstairs and, as usual, glugged some orange juice out of a carton, only to discover that, because I had no muscle control over one side of my mouth, most of the juice ended up down my shirt. The cornea, for instance, can dry out because you can’t close your eye or blink properly (in the early stages sufferers are advised to use eye drops or wear a patch).There is also a considerable amount of mess involved, especially when eating and drinking. Fortunately my wife’s uncle had had the condition a couple of months previously and she provided a diagnosis.Although visually alarming, Bell’s Palsy is not in itself either dangerous or life threatening. It is certainly uncomfortable – imagine an invisible hand clamped to the side of your face constantly dragging your features downwards – and, if you are not careful, can lead to some unpleasant complications. I couldn’t close my eye properly; my mouth had rearranged itself into a diagonal rather than horizontal line; and I had no right-side facial movement, as if I had undergone a particularly intense course of botox.So dramatic was the transformation, and so sudden, that, like Toby Young, my immediate thought was that I’d suffered a stroke.

I went to bed one evening looking normal, but when I woke the next morning the entire right side of my face seemed to have slipped an inch below the left, leaving me looking like a partially melted waxwork. Latest research has suggested it probably has a viral trigger (my own symptoms arrived soon after an acute chest infection).The paralysis comes on swiftly and with no obvious warning signs. In 99 per cent of cases it affects only one side of the face, and although an estimated one in 70 of the UK population will suffer from it at some point in their lifetime, there is still no medical consensus as to what causes it. Or at least it was until I myself recently came down with Bell’s Palsy, at which point the idea of wonky faces and dribbling mouths suddenly became a lot less amusing.
Named after Sir Charles Bell, the 19th-century surgeon who first described the condition, Bell’s Palsy is an inflammation of the seventh cranial nerve, the matrix of 7,000 nerve fibres that control the muscles of the face (and hence all facial movement and expression).

Convinced he has suffered a “coke stroke” – brought on by excessive consumption of Class A narcotics – he rushes to his doctor who diagnoses a condition called Bell’s Palsy before shamelessly inquiring if Young has any idea where he himself can get some

It’s one of the funniest anecdotes in the book. At these very high doses, the blood level of vitamin C is high enough to selectively kill cancer cells.Several clinical trials of vitamin C therapy are about to start, including one at McGill University, Montreal, the authors say.. There’s a wonderful episode in Toby Young’s How to Lose Friends and Alienate People – a record of his disastrous stint working as a journalist in New York – when the hapless hack wakes up one morning to discover that half his face is paralysed. However, injections achieve blood levels 25 times higher that persist for longer. The problem has been delivering a high enough dose.The researchers say attempts to replicate Dr Pauling’s work failed because they used oral doses of the drug which is rapidly excreted. Studies show that vitamin C is toxic to some cancer cells but not to normal cells. Dr Pauling’s claims sparked the continuing boom in sales of vitamin C, but attempts to confirm his findings failed and high-dose vitamin C became an “alternative” therapy.The latest study, published in the Canadian Association’s Medical Journal, could trigger renewed interest in Dr Pauling’s claims.