I didn't buy her video,

... but that’s only because it wasn’t in Tesco when the need to be educated inch by inch by Jade Goody came over me.

It didn’t last long, like many of my good intentions.

But this one day, thinking that I’d try yet another scam to get myself fit and feeling fabulous again, I thought I’d give the girl a try.

But Jade’s Shape Challenge and me wasn’t meant to be.

I got Gaynor Faye’s fitness DVD instead, but gave up on that as a bad lot when housemate Hiya Love had an asthma attack watching me do fake skating on the bathroom mat and star jumps in the kitchen. Not a pretty sight.

Besides, I was thankful it wasn’t on the shelves because I can’t stand her voice, the same voice that once declared the Mona Lisa was painted by someone called Pistachio, Rio de Janeiro was a “person”, Mother Theresa “is from Germany”, Portugal was “in Spain”, “East Angular is abroad”, “Saddam Hussein was a boxer” and “I may not be the sharpest tool in the sandwich box.”

Anyway, guess what I learned today?

Miss Goody has been a bit of a baddie because she’s about to appear on Tonight with Sir Trevor McDonald (as an aside, how dull is that man?) and reveal that when she dropped two dress sizes, it wasn’t really down to her evangelical jumping about.

Nope, mouth almighty was actually addicted to slimming pills.

Jade will spill the salt-free, low-fat beans to Sir Trevor about her desperation to shed the pounds after becoming famous on Big Brother back in 2002.

As you may recall, Jade was originally nicknamed Miss Piggy after her stint in the BB house, but after leaving the show she slimmed down and, of course, made the fitness video.

An insider from Camp Goody is quick to insist that although Jade’s weight has increased rapidly since her controversial appearance on Celebrity BB, she has not resorted to slimming pills again.

This in turn prompted one online women’s magazine to gloat, “We feel so cheated, here we were tirelessly working out to our ‘Let’s get fit, and get dancing’ vid, and all along she was just popping pills. Bloomin’ cheek!”

Is that what you think? Are you of the opinion that she in some way cheated her audience?

Well, okay, so you may have a point. But – and here’s the big question – would you take slimming pills if you could get your pudgy little hands on them?

I would. And I have. And they didn’t work.

I’ve tried them a few times – from appetite suppressants to those blue babies which make you “expel” fat in not the most pleasant of ways.

Nothing worked on me. Mam Jones says it’s because I’ve got the constitution of a horse. (Sadly, my arse is the size of one too.)

I can’t berate Jade for doing what she thought she needed to do for the press to take her seriously. They don’t take pictures of fat birds, do they?

She may have fallen out of favour since her last and disastrous BB outing, but there’s no denying that since she first left the house as a gobby blonde in a tight pink dress, she’s not done too bad for herself.

It doesn’t matter how she did it, but she is still a lot slimmer. She’s a glossier brunette, with an on/off 19-year-old boyfriend, two sons aged three and two from a previous relationship, her own perfume, two fitness videos, a property portfolio, and a fortune in the bank from interviews and photoshoots with magazines and highly lucrative appearances in other reality TV shows such as What Jade Did Next and Celebrity Driving School.

She even ousted Victoria Beckham from the cover of celebrity-obsessed Heat magazine, struck up an unlikely friendship with Kate Moss (Jade, according to showbiz sources, has been invited to several parties at the supermodel’s home), and was recognised by Samuel L Jackson when the two found themselves on the same plane.

And why? It’s not her brain power is it. Nope, it’s because she lost weight and glammed up a bit.

And everybody loves a good diet story. Right?

The same goes for another Big Brother contestant, this time Welsh wonder Laura “Wangers” Williams.

She’s also decided to try to slim down because she’s been told she won’t get any big deals – or those prerequisite bikini shots in lads’ mags which really bring in the big bucks – because she’s not thin enough, a typical object of desire.

Laura says she’s determined to lose weight, tone up and get the kind of work “slimmer” BB exes bag.

“I’m trying to lose weight to get more work,” is how she put it to me when we met recently, gym gear at her side, in a Cardiff restaurant where we enjoyed a dieter’s dream lunch of cheese-loaded potato skins, cheesy garlic bread, full fat pop, onion rings and coleslaw.

“I’ve been told by loads of people that it will get me more work, see. Think about it – people like Chanelle (the Victoria Beckham wannabe from this year’s show) and others like her have had bikini shots in the magazines. Has anyone asked me? You’ve got to be joking. And I’m not all that big!” she points out.

“I’ve just got big boobs. To be honest, I don’t really care about what I look like,” an innocent’s grasp of irony seeping into her conversation once again.

“My agent – I got one for going on the show – tells me people like looking at nice-looking people. I don’t think I need to lose weight to look nice, but there you are. I’ve lost about a stone so far I think and want to get to under 10 stone. Anyway, perhaps I won’t like the thin Laura. Perhaps she’ll be boring and I’ll hate the skinny me. I’m living on fresh air and water these days.

“The press were cruel though. This woman in The Sun was talking about me and Shabnam in the shower, wondering how she managed to fit in there with me in there too, cheeky cow.

“Well I may be fatter than that writer, but she’ll always be ugly.”

I don’t think La Wangers has resorted to the pills in order spill the flab. Yet.

But I know what desperation tastes like. And sadly it always comes super sized.