It takes a big personality ...

... in more ways than one – to celebrate your lumps, bumps and belly. It takes even more unravelling to like yourself just the way you are, especially if you’re the opposite of what society deems acceptable and attractive.

But some have managed it, a few beautiful, brilliant and, yes, big souls for whom “chubby” is no barrier to success or self-confidence. They’ve managed to force their considerable talents and bountiful bits through the cracks that largely forbid obese people from getting through by the force of their will, talents and iron-willed mantra which should be doled out at school at the earliest opportunity along with the pop and crisps.

And that is: “I’m not better than you, but, even looking and feeling like I do, I’m definitely as good as.” It’s taken years for people of a different shape – and trust me, round is a shape – to break into the mainstream of pop culture, those like comic Johnny Vegas, singer Beth Ditto and Gavin and Stacey stars James Corden and Ruth Jones.

But instead of just celebrating the fact they’re amazing role models, now they’re being blamed for our obesity epidemic.

Not only have they to contend with chaffing legs, researchers are sticking two stick thin fingers up to them by saying their success causes the public to accept being overweight as normal and ignore the dangers of carrying too many pounds. The survey of over 2,000 adults was carried out for charity Nuffield Health, which offers weight loss surgery in its hospitals.

Hello, can anyone spot a clue there? They don’t get Twiggies through their door, do they!

Anyway, Professor Michael McMahon, Nuffield’s consultant said: “The increasing profile of larger celebrities such as James Corden, Ruth Jones, Eamonn Holmes and Beth Ditto means that being overweight is now perceived as being normal in the eyes of the public.

“The danger of celebrities who flaunt their weight is that viewers admire them and do not take their own weight as seriously as they should.”

Doctor, let me tell you something for nothing – I don’t know one single overweight person who hasn’t, at some time in their lives, struggled with their sense of self.

They’ve probably spent years following the dietary Holy Trinity of calorie counting, Atkins and abject misery until they said enough’s enough. I know that I have.

Speaking as someone who’s a size 24, I have spent a lifetime wishing that I didn’t have a weight “problem” or – and here’s a thing – simply had the necessary tools at my disposal to accept myself the way I am.

In May, I made a BBC documentary about this very subject called Fix My Fat Head.

It was my attempt to find out why I do what I do – and that is sometimes, not all the time, overeat for comfort and pleasure or to swallow down dissatisfaction.

I also wanted to see if I could employ different tactics to get to actually like myself as a fat person, or “person of size” as the Americans like to delicately put it. As part of that show I tried out an overeaters’ support group, an extreme dieting class, and Cognitive Behaviour Therapy sessions.

While having a go on the chair with a hypnotist to the stars, I was asked if I’d ever been called Dumbo. And she wasn’t asking about my intelligence levels there.

I’m sure well-meaning folk confuse having thick ankles with being thick-skinned. But do you know what I should have done instead?

I should have had dinner with James, Beth, Johnny and Ruth.

I should have spent time in their company, listening to them talk about their complex relationships with food, and possibly themselves. I should have taken measure of people for whom size is a state of mind, and not the measure of them as individuals.

I should have gone round to their houses, had a poke through their kitchen cupboards, and just had a bloody good laugh about this fat infused predicament of ours. At least they wouldn’t be watching how much you ate.

Tell someone they’re not quite up to the mark often enough, that they would be “better” slimmer, and only an idiot wouldn’t believe the tripe.

I’ve spent years wondering if I’d ever get to grips with myself, that authentic (thank you, Oprah) part of me that wakes up every morning and screams: “You’re great just the way you are, no matter what people say to you!”

Yet I seem to have spent my entire life on countless diets and feeling that I don’t quite measure up, especially in the boobs, waist and thighs ratio. Fat is a word that strikes fear into the heart of anyone who doesn’t know the meaning of different.

It’s the antithesis of accepted beauty, a big huge flabby blight on the landscape of normality, something which lots of us over a size 18 can’t quite get to grips with.

And that’s because we’re still largely on the cusp of acceptance. We can’t shop like the rest of you, assumptions are made about our lifestyle choices, if we go to the doctor with an eye infection it’s flippantly blamed on some form of obese germ running through every pour.

Wipe the tears of disbelief and frustration away and you spend your life over compensating for not being able to control this one anomaly by constantly trying to out-do, out-smart and out-funny the rest of the normal sized world. What we don’t need is yet another doctor denying us the bounty of brilliant, beautiful and happy role models who just happen to be a bit overweight. There are worse things to be than fat and absolutely fabulous you know.