A German belly dancer who checked into hospital to have her thighs trimmed ended up with just one butt cheek after the plastic surgeon hoovered out her right buttock, Ananova reports.

Julia "Cleopatra" Meyer, 38, of Munich, said of her liposuction ordeal at the Berlin Charité hospital: "I had been unhappy with my saddlebags, the fat stored in the outer thigh area. Because of the local anaesthesia I did not realise what he was doing. When I saw afterwards that half of my bum was missing I almost fainted. It had been completely sucked away."

Unsurprisingly, the matter ended in court, where Meyer was awarded £12,000 damages against the unnamed private plastic surgeon. The court heard her career is dead and the poor woman "does not even dare to go to a swimming pool because she is ashamed of the way she looks".

A consultant at the Berlin Charité hospital chipped in his expert opinion, describing the arse reduction as a "grave error in treatment". ®