Imagine for a second ...

... a glossy magazine has decided you’re important enough to do a big spread on you.

Let’s say, for example, you are the kind of famous which warrants five colour pages of pictures and copy, numerous costume changes and you looking all loved up with your other half.

You’re not famous enough to warrant a front cover or get a big chunk next to Madonna’s hand vein specialist, or anything like that.

But, because you were once “up there” with the greats, such as Atomic Kitten and Bewitched, you’re still big enough to get arse-end coverage, your status now resigned to starting on page 94.

Claire Richards, who was once a Deeper Shade of Blue in the pop group Steps, found herself in this situation in last week’s OK! magazine when the crew went round her house to take pictures of her, partner Reece Hill and newborn baby Charlie.

Ostensibly there to mark the birth (and give the rest of us a good nose through their house), once they clapped eyes on her they appeared to be more interested in one thing: Claire’s gone fat.

Bandmates Ian ‘H’ Watkins – the Welsh one – Faye Tozer, Lisa Scott-Lee – oops, sorry, I forgot she’s from Rhyl – and Lee Latchford-Evans continued to live their lives in the spotlight, it seems that “shy Claire”, instead of bathing in the flashes of paparazzi bulbs, has spent her time eating cake off radar.

Happy as a pig in the proverbial she might have been, but because she’s had to face the cameras once again, her chocolate covered love-ins are apparent for all the world to see.

Now me being me, and seeing with two big bold eyes instead of seeing through a judgmental skinny lens, can safely say she doesn’t look as fit as she did when she was the main “voice” of Steps.

Sue me, but she doesn’t. But that doesn’t mean she looks awful. She just looks like a happy, size-16-plus-new-mum.

Everyone knows that people are, by and very bloody large, more attractive when they’re smaller.

But – and here’s the clincher – if there wasn’t a picture printed alongside the piece to remind us of her slim days in Steps, you’d just think, oh, there’s a nice looking girl.

But not the writers at the magazine. Nope, they went to town on the fact she’s put on loads of weight, kindly souls that they are.

Of course they do all the invariable oohing and aaahing over the baby, asking the inevitable questions about late nights, the shock of giving birth and celebrity godparents.

And then, after lulling the poor dab into a false sense of security, they go in for the kill.

From asking “how is the nappy changing?” they clomper stomper their way through with, “Are you planning to lose the baby weight in record time like most celebs, Claire?”

Nice, eh?

“I really want to lose the weight, but I’m not good without help,” said the singer, obviously choking on her family-sized bar of Galaxy.

“I have no discipline. I used to be in my Steps days and was happy to starve myself for a week.

“But I can’t do that any more. I try not to eat bad food, but it was my birthday a couple of weeks ago and I ate most of my birthday cake and the leftovers.

“When I was in Steps the routines would make it easy to stay trim.

“In fact, I got quite obsessed with trying to be slim and I didn’t go about it in the healthiest of ways. I never had an eating disorder, I just didn’t diet the best way – I’d eat one meal a day, which was stupid because I needed energy to do all those routines.

“Back then, I always thought I was the fat one in Steps. Now I look back and think, God, I wasn’t like that at all!”

We’ve all done it, haven’t we? Got obsessed about dieting, losing weight, keeping fit, eating, not eating, weighing out your chips along with your self-esteem.

Look at me – I’m back in diet class after saying I’d never go again, wondering if this plan, one of the many, will be THE ONE to help us move on with the basic art of living.

Or, and here’s a novel idea, it could be the plan which breaks the camel’s back of my dieting life, and we I accept myself as I am, warts ‘n’ flab ‘n’ imperfections ‘n’ all.

Claire, bless her, is even asked what she weighs, if she’s “down” about being the newly crowned queen of the Pop Star Gone To Seed gang and if – IF – she’d lose weight IF her boyfriend proposed to her.

They might as well have asked her to pull her heart out and let the skinny stylist stick her stillies in it then kick it around the room.

“Well I won’t go wedding dress shopping until I’ve lost the weight. I’d hate it.

“You have to look fabulous,” she says.

As if fabulous is measured in Pronuptia. Then again...