I WONDER ....

... if hiccuping is my body’s way of telling me not to chew, or at least swallow.

For normal people, whose lives aren’t dictated by the eating/not eating conundrum, I’m sure they just think it’s an inconvenience.

They’d wait until the involuntary spasm of their diaphragm stopped, and then move on with what they were doing before.

Chances are it wouldn’t have been, like in my case, walking past Greggs and wondering if two cheese-and-onion pasties would be breaking the dieting law, even considering that I’d had nothing to eat that day and it was 3.27pm.

But as I approached the window of joy, I felt a sudden rush of air into my lungs which caused my epiglottis to close – yes, I started hiccuping.

The trouble with hiccuping when you’re as big as I am (no letters from smaller sympathisers please) is that you look like you’re doing a belly laugh. Only it’s no joke.

When big girls really chortle and let rip, it’s a beautiful sight. Normally it’s unfettered, throaty and uncensored.

But something also happens to that one bit of ourselves we can’t stand to be associated with but which follows us around like a gutsy lunatic.

Our bellies convulse, shake, rattle and roll about, jabbing their way further forward – if possible – into the world.

They thrust the unthrustable onwards, which means our big bums are left playing catch-up, our big behinds trailing behind.

We hiccup, and the world holds its breath, and if you’ve got that cough-wee association going on like I do, Pampers makes a mint.

I read, though, that one possible beneficial effect of hiccups is to dislodge foreign pieces of food.

I don’t know about you, but I know exactly what goes in my mouth, and none of it’s a stranger. And I’m fully conversant in the language of Carbs.

Anyway, the boffins say, “When a piece of food is swallowed that is too large for the natural peristalsis of the oesophagus to move the food quickly into the stomach, it applies pressure on the phrenic nerve, invoking the hiccup reflex.

“This causes the diaphragm to contract, creating a vacuum in the thoracic cavity, which creates a region of low pressure on the side of the lump of food nearest the stomach, and a region of high pressure on the side of the lump of food nearest the mouth.

“This lungs differential across the food creates a force, which assists peristalsis.

“In humans, gravity partially assists peristalsis, but in quadrupeds and many marine vertebrates, their oesophagi run roughly perpendicular to the force of gravity, so gravity provides little assistance.

“The hiccup mechanism likely evolved as an aid to peristalsis in our ancestors.”

Or, if you take me as an example, it’s what happens when you forget to chew a custard slice and appear to swallow it whole. Yes, vipers have nothing on me.

People are always banging on to me about why I should listen to my body.

Then, they say, I’ll only eat when I’m hungry and stop when I’m full.

I must be deaf then. I know I’m blind to the notion of my allure, and it seems I’m also devoid of another sense, in the “common” sense of the term.

I spent about a month listening to a Paul McKenna CD, one which would help me gain control of my diet.

All I got at the end of the four weeks was a dislike for an Essex accent.

For all my gesticulating, though, I don’t often eat cakes or pasties or really, really bad things.

But I do binge and fall into a vat of self-negation as I mentally step over a sea of empty wrappers and mountain of breadcrumbs from a fresh cob stuffed down my gob, actions which cruelly make me binge all the more.

And I was bingeing while musing on pasties and the fact I told my Significant (thin) Other I was going to go back to Fat Club (again...) next week.

I realise now that at the same time – I think I must have been semi-unconscious or in a flaky pastry daze – I was attempting to swallow the custard slice. Width ways.

It was then that the hiccups started.

I didn’t go back to the office to ask someone to startle me, drink water through a cloth or hold my breath.

But there is something to be said for eating a spoonful of sugar/honey/peanut butter while waiting for nature to take its course.

Me at Baglan library ...

... where I "entertained bookworms in a funny, frank and hilarious fashion" (apparently!)

I doubt that anyone ...

... would say on their deathbed, “You know, I wish I’d spent more time on the internet.”

They may, however, say, while facing down the gates of heaven which are more chewing gum white after a lifetime of bad living than pearly, “If only I’d had more ice-cream.”

Someone sent me an email asking me to think about that the other day. It came from a VERY fancy author, one of the biggest selling in the UK let alone Wales.

She was blathering on about how much she enjoyed my book but – there’s always a big BUT isn’t there, especially when us big girls turn around and catch sight of the trailer trash that is our derriere – she couldn’t understand the way I treat myself in its pages.

It’s the same old story, moans about why I spilled my ample guts in such a way, and why I beat myself up about my perceived limitations and weaknesses, especially around homemade lasagne and chips.

“But you’re lovely just the way you are,” she threw at me from the safety of her size 14 zone.

“A friend of mine spent a lifetime dieting and never seemed to be satisfied with the way she was, even though everyone said she was lovely. And do you know what she said to me before she died? ‘If only I’d had more ice-cream.’ You want to think about that.”

And think about that I did, for a few minutes at least.

I thought, yep, she’s right – why am I ruled by my weight? Why do I allow myself to weigh out my self-esteem by how many pieces of bread I have a day?

So I did what any self- respecting professional dieter would do after an epiphany – I ate my lunch at 27 minutes past nine. In the morning, you understand.

I got up off my now beautiful arse and walked towards the tiny fridge in work which seemed to be filled by two of my rolls, grabbed the one, took it to my desk and started to unwrap the foil which was hiding away my hope and fears in one tiny bundle of egg and cress in a Tiger Roll comforter.

And I ate, I chewed, I bit down on more eggy cressness while the years of weight watching confusion suddenly cleared.

And then… and then… and then… I broke a tooth. While I’m digesting this new twist in my sobriety, the sheer force of my hunger to right my lifetime of wrongs – and, okay, eat for Wales before anyone noticed I was having my lunch for breakfast WITH my breakfast – my greed backfires big style.

Agony is NOT the word; but I still managed to chew the other one on the right hand side while my left canine was split in half and digging into the root of my mouth. I’m nothing if not resourceful.

The next day, having spent the night celebrating my return to toothy form with a quart of Green & Blacks ice-cream, my new sense of equilibrium was tested in the most cruel of ways.

No, I didn’t have to have a medical, wear Lycra, run a mile, go braless, go sleeveless and straighten my hair – I had to go and interview singer Katherine Jenkins.

She’s lovely, is Kath, really down to earth and chopsy.

She’s also as big as my wrist and just about comes up to my belly (and you know how a girl hates drawing attention to that… she’s so small she could hide under it to avoid a tan).

The diminutive diva opened the door to me, threw her arms around me and said – yes, without a smirk on her flawless face – “Han, you look so glam! You look amazing.”

Honest to God, that’s what she said – Size Dwt, perfectly formed, not a hair out of place Jenkins.

And what did I say? “Shut up Kath… I came on the bus, my legs are chaffing, I’ve had two fags and been spraying Samsara like there’s no tomorrow all over me to disguise it, my knickers are too tight, you’ve got a hairdresser and make-up artist doing the magic on you this morning so forgive me if I start to involuntarily twang during our interview, and I put fake tan on this morning instead of foundation cream.”

She asked about my book (“What’s it about?” Me being fat. “You’re not fat.” Shut up Kath, I think you must have one eye in Brynmawr, the other in Tonteg. “You’re so funny.” And you’re so tiny.)

If there’s anyone in the world who can silently remind you that having too much ice-cream could be a bad thing, it’s her.

But that didn’t stop me from trying out the nerve endings on my newly-repaired gnashers with a 99 and two Flakes on the bus back to reality.

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.

Wouldn't it be great to feel happy?

You know, in your skin, just as you are, flab ‘n’ all happy.

I want that feeling so bad sometimes I can almost taste it. Taste, though, is my problem. Keeping a grip on the joy vibe is also up there on my checklist of things I’m crap at. It’s telephone directory size, as thick as my love handles and as incomprehensible at a quick glance.

So let’s cut to the chase and let me ask you one meaty question: How true to yourself are you? Can you stand up and say you’re dissatisfied with the way you or things in your life are? Are you honest?

I am. And it’s a big, big problem. Emotionally speaking, I’m as crumbly as Cheshire cheese. But I know that, and I can easily talk about why that is the case.

What I’m not prepared for, however, is how this attitude affects those closest to me. Let’s step back a bit though, and follow this through to its logical conclusion.

Last week, as I try to sell myself and my book based on these columns by being something of a media tart, I had a sniff of appearing in one of the nation’s biggest selling weekly women’s magazines.

This mag, which shall remain anonymous, loved my pictures, loved my story, loved my book, loved my attitude, loved me so much I could have been made out of chocolate instead of looking like I’ve been living on caravan-sized bars of the stuff for the past 35 years.

My publisher, my friends, the girls in work were whooping for joy at the thought of the book finally – finally! – reaching people over the Bridge. This could be IT, they all salivated – the kind of “it” that would put me up there with the literary greats. Yes, the people who wrote the Slimming World manual. So I was all set, ready for my BIG media break, even considering having my hair cut for the pictures, even if they were of me straddling a chip pan fryer.

And then… and then… and then came another email.

“We still want to do the feature,” it said. “But we want to make sure you’re okay with the angle we’re taking. You are, aren’t you, fine with your body? You’re at peace, right? You’ve stopped dieting and think you’re fabulous. You’re a size 16-18, yeah? You’ve finally accepted yourself the way you are. Agreed?”

Er, no. Not exactly. So, what would you do in my situation?

On the one hand, you’ve got your publisher breathing down your neck to do whatever it takes to sell books, got people’s well wishes to deal with, plus the added pressure of feeling that if you admit to feeling fine about yourself, wouldn’t you have spent the last god knows how many years living a lie? Wouldn’t the basic plot of the book – the ups and down of my dieting life, the way it has ALWAYS affected my self-esteem and outlook on life – then be a sham? Just like the time I tried to live on cereal for a week.

I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t pretend to be happy and content as I am when, let’s face it, every day is a battle with myself. Do you know what I mean?

I was gutted, but if you can’t be true to yourself, what do you have left?

Chicken fajitas, Green and Blacks with orange bits in and a burger from the Hard Rock Café for a start (at least that’s what I consoled myself with after the second email).

But – and here’s the rub – being true to who I FEEL I am has other consequences.

They also hurt my mother.

The other day I was on the radio, the Jamie and Louise Show on Radio Wales, talking about Diary of a Diet: A Little Book of Big. We laughed, we had fun, we had chocolate ice-cream for god’s sake.

After the show, I called Mam Jones thinking she would shower me with praise about how wonderful/funny/fantastic/ insightful I had been. Instead she picked up the phone in tears, wondering why my “act” – for want of a better description about being a Z-list fat “celebrity” – is based on putting myself down.

As Jo Brand says in the foreword to my book, you might as well have a laugh about who and what you are, if who and what you are is bigger than those who are having a laugh at your expense anyway.

I tried to articulate this to the world’s number one Han Fan, otherwise known as my mother, but nothing would assuage her. As far as she’s concerned, her pride at me – her daughter with the job, the achievements, the book, the big eyes and big hair – isn’t dependent on the success I get from being a “fat” author. Which means she’s unable to listen to me having a laugh at why I love corned beef rolls, the comedy of errors that has been my love life and the way I can easily self-negate when it comes to worshipping at the altar of carbohydrates.

“You’re as good as anyone else,” were her words, radio turned to off. “You’re as lovely, as beautiful, as clever, as good damn it. Why do you have to put yourself down all the time?”

“But Mam…”

“But Mam bloody nothing. To me you’ll always be a little girl holding my hand, the funniest little thing with the biggest eyes and the widest smile. You are more than the numbers on a bloody scales. You are my daughter. And I love you. I’m proud of you. But I won’t listen to you do this to yourself, however funny people might think you are.”

I felt like a porn star, the kind of person who has to keep what they do from the people they love because they know it’ll hurt them.

The irony, of course, is that by not admitting I feel more than I do about myself, that my self-esteem is fatter, I’ve ruined my chance of reaching more people who’ve weighed out their self-esteem along with their chips.

I told Mam Jones about the woman’s mag conundrum and she understood, said I shouldn’t sell myself out or admit to being less than I am. Go figure.

But somehow, doing the opposite doesn’t seem to be enough today either.

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...

A RIGHT old jumble of thoughts ...

... mixing up along chaotically with the fat free strawberry yoghurt I had for breakfast. So big I think the Amercians would call it a cart. Or a quart. Whatever, it was massive.

Here’s what’s rumbling (sadly, it’s never my belly).

I’ve put on weight. I knew I had. I can just sense these things, like a half baked psychic, heavy on the sick.

The grand total of my dietary shortcomings is 8.5lbs. That’s in two months, which is how long it’s been since I last went to Fat Club.

I know it’s just over half a stone because I went back to Han Reunited FC last Monday, new (fat and thin) faces filled with hope lining up for a go on the scales.

FC teach, the biggest loser of them all in the best possible way, called me up to say welcome back. I said I’d put on 8.5lbs as my hello. She said not to worry. I said it was OK for her to say that, she’s lost 76876 of the buggers.

But to make her point, she said she’d been on holidays and put on 9.5lbs. That’s more than me, in case you’re rubbish at maths.

Since I last saw you, I asked. No, she said. Since holidays. Had you been away for two months, then? Two weeks, she said again. “I put on 9.5lbs in two weeks. It’s the b****** chocolate and lager. So you haven’t done so bad. God, I’m depressed.”

Chocolate and lager, not my weaknesses but I know that if I drank (I don’t) or was a chocoholic (I like a sneaky bar of Dairy Milk with the best of them, but it’s not a hankering) I’d be on her team.

I felt better, for a moment. Thinking that even if the biggest loser can put on - and she knows all the rules of the game, down to even having a special container with only her milk allowance in the fridge - I’m not as bad/crap/useless/human as I felt.

So I had two packets of crisps - low fat, in case you were wondering - to celebrate being so, well, human.

Anyway, two months ago I said to myself, as I tend to do in moments of clarity, that I’d try really, really hard to lose some more weight before my book launch, this coming Saturday in Cardiff (Waterstone‘s noon-2pm; WH Smith, 3pm-4pm if you‘re interested in having a copy and a free donut). So that I could go shopping in that magical land called ANYWHERE and pick up something nice.

My book’s out officially on Monday, based on these columns of mine. To give it its full title it’s Diary of a Diet: A Little Book of Big.

And guess what? I’m 8.5lbs heavier that I was two months ago. I’m so good at being bad I feel like a national treasure, so much so my face should be on tea towels so the Japanese tourists can take me home as a memento of What Not to Stuff when they come to Wales and fancy over-indulging on the Welsh fudge.

So what to wear to the launch? Something dramatic, Significant (thin) Other suggested. I reminded him that you can’t get Juicy couture in sour sized. Or the Fat ‘n’ Fabulous range in Principles.

A trip to Cardiff, then, to visit the Big Five of My Big Life - Chesca, Elvi, Anne Harvey, Box 2 and Evans, the total sum of my plus sized shopping experience.

Evans - sale stuff along one side of the shop, an abundance of leisure wear and stuff fat clubbers could make silly in. So, as you can imagine with one down and four shops left to go, disappointment started to jab.

Chesca - fine if you like glitzy cropped tops or were going to a wedding and didn’t mind going see-through.

Elvi and Anne Harvey - I’m 35, not 205.

Box 2 - £250 later I have two tops. Sufficiently dramatic, S(t)O panders. Hmpf, I tell myself, I think I look like Jo Brand dressed by Trinnie and Susannah I slam at him. Yes but Jo Brand liked your book so much she wrote its foreword, he tries again. (But my feet are hurting, thwarting anything getting through to my ears.) So, I goad, knowing how much he hates shopping for himself, what are you going to wear?

S(t)O, whose look is more crumpled Englishman abroad when he gives a damn, said we’d go to M&S.

To find a suit which looked like it belonged to an Englishman abroad, I ventured?

If they have it, he scowled.

S(t)O has the very same problem as me - he can’t find clothes to fit him as he’s the opposite end of the normality scale.

I’m fat, big bellied, tall and big boobed; he’s thin, flat bellied, tall with shoulders which Duncan Goodhew would covet, ones which he hates and I love.

I watch as he gets frustrated with himself, rally at the designers, wonder why he can’t get quirky in the long legged and lovely and big shouldered bloke’s section of M&S.

It’s like watching myself after a lifetime of being forced fed testosterone on rye.

Just try something on, I gently coax. Then came the clincher.

His “You don’t know what it’s like to be thin.”

No, I thought to myself, if you let yourself go and had three tidy meals a day, you’d slide into the normal zone.

And if I let myself go (even further), I’d need a vat of Vaseline to get my big fat arse through the swinging doors of the Last Fat Chance Saloon.