Soap actress Leslie Ash has put her foot in her mouth - likening her "trout pout" implant disaster to Heather Mills McCartney losing her leg.

Ash, a regular in Liverpool police drama Merseybeat, suffered an allergic reaction to collagen which left her with hugely inflated lips and made her the butt of jokes.

In an interview in this week's Radio Times, the 43-year-old said: "People don't laugh at Heather Mills because she lost a leg."

Former model Ms Mills McCartney, who lives with husband Sir Paul McCartney in Hove, lost her leg when she was hit by a police motorcyclist in 1993.

It is not the first time the former Men Behaving Badly star has made such a comparison.

In an interview this summer she said: "I had an accident. If I'd lost a leg in a car crash, people wouldn't have felt able to take the mickey out of me so mercilessly."

Explaining why she had the routine £300 procedure, she said: "I know I never really needed it doing in other people's eyes, and that's a great compliment.

"But I'm 43 and your top lip disappears when you get to that age and I felt I had to maintain a certain image.

"I'd actually had the operation before and it was fine but this time there was an allergic reaction.

"The stuff they mix with the collagen swelled and swelled. When the collagen disappears you're left with something that's like scar tissue and that's why my lips were so hard.

"My bottom lip just wouldn't break down the granules."

The mother-of-two has since had painful corrective surgery but the damage appears to be permanent.

She said: "I've been to doctors who've tried to correct it, and some days it's fine.

"But if I get any water retention and you do at 43 instead of it just coming on my stomach I get it on my lips. It's a nightmare."

Ash said her husband, former Arsenal and Leeds United footballer Lee Chapman, helped her through her troubles.

The couple have been married for 15 years and have two sons, Joe, 15, and Max, 11.

She said: "We have a passionate relationship. We like a shouting match and then it's over.

"Recently we've been closer than ever. I couldn't have done without his support. He has been brilliant."