Do you know where I can find ...

... some taupe coloured scaffolding?

It has to go under my clothes and be easily identifiable as a fat suit by a thin friend who comes round and decides to play dress down with my stuff.

On TV the other night, when Trinny and Susannah were trying to undress the nation, they took it on their size 10 selves to address the “problem” we plus size girls have finding things to fit us.

An hour in, it seems all you have to do to look good is buy something to suit your shape but which won’t zip up. But, once you get it home and you slip on your fat hiding body armour, hey presto, you’re suddenly deliciously curvy rather than disappointingly doughy.

But where does the blubber go? It doesn’t just disappear when you’re wearing a safety harness, does it?

It’s got to go somewhere, either out the top or down the bottom. And I’m guessing that the poor dab who was paraded around in it for the show now has size 786 feet. The irony there, of course, is that she’d get that size anywhere, but the shop would have to phone around to get the shoes in wide fitting.

I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to go out feeling that if I blew off, my head would come off my shoulders because my underwear is too constricting.

But that’s what T&S are suggesting we all do if we want to look good, but definitely not on the way to being naked

I’ve got to take their word for it because their wizard undies, which double as passion killing thigh trimmers and all-in-one belly busters, will slim me down, knock a dress size off me and pull me in and stick me out in all the right places.

I should also imagine that it would be impossible to eat with all that inward pressure going on, let alone worrying about not coughing while standing and not having enough give to cross your legs.

Oh go on, think about it.

Good underwear is one thing, but knowingly putting on something so ugly, so shape changingly dishonest, would be like wearing a second sausage skin of false hope. You take it off, and you’re still, well, you.

We know that people will do the most extreme things to look good because there’s that old saying that when you look good you feel good, right?

But I want to feel at the very least comfortable in my own skin, rather than a cheat in a reinforced, industrially knitted fantasy version of me.

I don’t know about you, but my blood needs to circulate otherwise I get light headed. And we all know that when that happens, you reach for SUGAR. See? Even pants can be evil.

As for what you wear on top, the skinny do-gooders tried to convince us we can all look great as long as we know what suits us.

Blimey, who knew! I expect their next piece of wisdom will be about how to lose weight by eating less and moving around more. God, they’re good.

They started their show by complaining that not enough clothes are made in big sizes, and that it was up to the shops to just make stuff, well, bigger.

Half way through, they’d changed their minds though and decided that, no, us biggies need special attention from the designers because, let’s face it, we’re never going to get away with Topshop patterns put through a photocopier and scaled up 200%.

No way! Really? And there was me thinking all outsized women can get away with waistcoats and ruffles and pencil skirts.

I don’t think even putting that little lot on top of magic (you’re going to like it, but not a lot if you’ve actually got to breathe) knickers would make the thin look work on everyone.

At some point, we’re going to have to come to the realisation that there has to be an outsize section in “normal” shops, rather than tokenist enlargements of skinny styles which are never going to work on women with bellies and boobs and bums anyway.

Magic underwear? Best avoided, unless you want to pull rabbits out of your arse.

Rin has had new pictures taken ...

... this time by my Significant (thin, but rapidly getting a belly) Other.
She enjoyed the experience, she told me, and I think that’s largely because she’s not self-conscious.
When I got home after my super snapper had been playing at being David Bailey I found that he’d kept his lights and backdrop – and crucially his camera – out.
“Come on, have some new pictures taken,” he gently coaxed. You haven’t had any done for a while.”
As gently as I could I reminded him that there was a reason for this – fat face, fat in the face, fat of face – which he gently swept aside with some mumblings about me talking nonsense.
And then came the clincher, my “aha” moment which I’d dutifully hidden  in my Think About It Later mental store cupboard.
“You can’t hide on the telly. You won’t be able to do your show hiding in a bin liner, will you?” With his point taken, a mild panic set in.
And then, just like I can convince myself that eating an entire tube of low fat Pringles is OK because, well, they’re low fat, with lightning speed I justified my involvement away with a nimble: “Nah, I can do telly. No problem.
“I won’t care what I look like because I just won’t watch it when it’s on.” Easy as that.
Let me clarify the “do telly” line there. I’ve been asked to front a one-hour prime time documentary on BBC One (that’s BBC ONE!) which starts filming next weekend (that’s NEXT WEEKEND!).
Funnily enough, it’s not going to be me looking at the intricacies of the credit crunch, high profile politics, adrenaline junkie holidays or how to Make Me A Supermodel Tonteg.
It’s going to be me blathering on about what I know best.
Specifically, it’s about the psychology of food and the nature of the leak in my head.
But where I say “my head” there, what I’m actually talking about is the 13 million other Brits who are also on a permanent diet and who can’t quite stick to it.
The serious bit of Fix My Fat Head, the show’s working title, is to illustrate, via me and my insecurities and often wonky view of the world, that for many, obesity (how I hate that word) is an outward sign of a fundamentally dysfunctional relationship with food stemming from entrenched psychological and emotional issues.
 Phew! I’ve found all you can eat buffets easier to negotiate.
We can  acknowledge that  anorexia and bulimia are psychological diseases – but it still seems radical to state that overeating and obesity are often rooted in psychological disorder.  
The bods who commissioned it want me to dive (luckily not wearing a two-piece)  into the heart of this controversy,  to show that it’s invariably not what we eat but why we eat which causes so much rumpus.
I’m looking forward to doing it, but I  do have a niggling Why Don’t You? worry, about people  switching off their television sets, going out and doing something less boring instead.
I’ve no trouble with baring my soul – but, as I mentioned, having to look at myself while doing it is another matter.
But maybe the thought of 10 million (gulp) or more people watching me do it, might be encouragement enough to think that I really am fine, just the way I am.
Then again...

SUMMER…

... don’t you just hate it? Not only do you have to contend with restaurants trying to foist seasonal fruits, fresh avocado and petit salad of Japanese Shiso cress on you when what you really want is a big lump of sirloin steak and buttered mash, you’ve got to endure everyone jabbering on about their holidays.
And if you’re a girl, this is always littered with talk about the B word. No, not beef, baklava or bacon baps – but bikinis.
For someone like me, a size 24 and growing, the whole notion of cutting back on carbs and counting calories all year round in order to squeeze my bits and bobs into what basically amounts to underwear as your outerwear while your flesh is womballing free for a fortnight, makes this the season of unpalatable conversation.
If you’re happy and you know it but you really don’t want to show it off in a bikini, summer can be a wash out for the foodie who’s gone too far in the game of indulgence to bare all in a blaze of washboard bellied glory.
I learned a long time ago that I didn’t have the kind of shape – round is a shape, right? – that was made for indulging in fun in the sun (unless that included an all-you-can-eat deal in a five star hotel in the fabled land of Chunky, a place where you didn’t have to undress for dinner).
While normal-sized friends of mine with an appetite for looking good rather than feeling sated and elated would start exercising portion control at least six months before a holiday, nothing would change for me.
Sure, I’d spend loads of time thinking about what it would be like to finally learn to say no to seconds and thirds and trim down to a reasonable size, one which could fit into a bikini and not run the risk of Greenpeace dragging me back into the water if I went onto the beach. But rational thought sometimes doesn’t taste that nice.
Of course I could have gone on girlie trips abroad, one where photographic evidence shows my pals looking divine sipping Margaritas by the pool (Tenerife) while sucking in their tummies (Magaluf) and making a meal (hello?!) out of sucking bits of fruit (Santa Ponsa). But frankly, I don’t have that much puff or patience with peeling.
Realising that having what food I wanted was far more important to me than trying to look like a Baywatch reject, I struck a novel deal with myself from a very early age.
No longer would I spend months of my dieting life struggling to feel more than I am (but not in the hip/thigh ratio, thank you very much) to try to fit into a bather.
I’d go for pure and unadulterated, guilt-free indulgence instead, to a place where you could stuff yourself silly while fully clothed, in mittens, a balaclava and elasticated trousers if necessary.
And in terms of food – look away now if you’re of a delicate nature or were born in the Windy City – I found it in America, where you can get all-you-can-eat buffets on tap as well as on the cheap, and your nails done while you’re waiting for the beef for your burger to stop mooing.
If we are what we eat, then I’m a steak and curly fries girl, piled high in a bid to satisfy the devilishly Desperate Dan side of Han; I’m melted cheese with burny bits skulking on the edges, pleading with me to pick at them. I’m hot pretzels on a cold day, strawberry cheesecake at any time, all-day breakfasts at midnight and always a stack of pancakes short of full.
I’m not a bikini babe – well, you can’t be, can you, if you’re someone whose idea of a fashionable two-piece is fried eggs followed by chips?
I am what you’d call a comfort eater, someone whose pleasure comes not from exquisite cuisine but in real soul food, only with less beans and gumbo, especially when feeding the Judith Chalmers wanderlust in me.
I’ll never forget my first visit to a diner in the US – they had Heinz tomato sauce on the table.
I don’t mean some sachet of a poor imitation of it which is what I’d always found in restaurants in other countries. But the proper, full-fat, sweet, sticky, gorgeous bloody stuff, the juice which transcends cultural difference and squirts a liberal dollop of Home over posh nosh, wherever you are in the world.
In America, the portions are huge, the taste incredible, the dessert menus straight from the fantasy scene of the cinema banquet in my mind.
And you never have to wipe sand from in between your toes to get at it or walk around in your smalls.
My options on my last trip to neon-coated paradise included dough well done with cow to cover (that’s buttered toast to carb virgins), a bowl of birdseed (cereal), a glass of drag one through Georgia to go (cola with chocolate syrup) with Noah’s boy on bread (ham sandwich) served up with a 100 watt smile by the soup jockey (waitress).
I just love the way size really, really matters, as mountains of finger lickin’ badness which taste so good are dished up in that blasé, almost celebratory way kids (or was it just me?) imagine table-buckling party food in Heaven would look.
I couldn’t live in America – I’d be dead by now, crushed under the weight of a dream sequence of me cavorting with a load of Zeppelins in a fog while trying to make room for a certain Eve with a mouldy lid (That’s sausage and mash, followed by apple pie with a slice of cheese on top if you’re interested).
Some would say, of course, that there’s no need to go to America to eat like an American.
Yankee cuisine can be replicated in any British kitchen by mixing peanut butter with mashed up bananas, ladling it on toast and deep-frying it in lard until golden brown.
Mmm, just like Elvis used to make. And it didn’t do him any harm.
Well, did it?

I AM officially too fat ...

... to shop in M&S. They go up to a size 24 – you know you’re EXTRA special when your size is the only one in the shop which is differentiated with a light blue hanger tag.
But it seems I’m not that special anymore. Just fat.
It made me wonder how I got from where I was two years ago – two and a half stone lighter and feeling like I was on the way to finding my better self, to say nothing about seeing my feet for the first time since 1971 – to where I am now.
And that’s a bit depressed if I’m being honest. But down that I may be, I’m still not doing much about it. And that’s the worst thing of all to consider.
Not even my disastrous, too big to look nice shopping spree wasn’t enough to shock me into activity. I kind of feel resigned. And I hate, hate, hate it.
The trouble with honesty, however, is that people either appreciate you for it or they think you could shut up and do something about why you’re blue in the first place.
My mother has a saying for it. She says you simply have to “pick yourself up and shake yourself down”.
I have a saying for it too. But I can’t repeat it in polite company.
Angelina Jolie doesn’t have a problem with being candid, and you never hear of anyone telling her to shut up.
People just coo: “It’s great that someone so beautiful should be so open. It’s amazing, with some of her past troubles, she is willing to share her darkest hours with the world so that people can learn from her mistakes.”
Me? Well, I just get letters from people telling me to either have more sex to burn up more calories (I had an offer from a pensioner with nice penmanship just the other week, Han fans), others banging (no pun intended) on about something to do with me shutting up and getting a life, or women (and some men, it has to be said) totally relating with my life’s dilemmas.
Sadly, I don’t get letters from personal trainers who live near Caerphilly or surgeons who want to practise gastric banding on a willing participant.
(I’d have it done in a heartbeat by the way. But my nearest and dearest won’t let me. And as much as I can cope with disappointing myself, I can’t bear putting them through the worry. Besides, isn’t it cheating? As if I’d care!)
But not Angelina. She doesn’t garner such derision.
She can admit to taking a rainbow of drugs – “I’ve done just about every drug possible. Coke, heroin, ecstasy, LSD, everything. The worst effect, for me, was pot. I felt silly and giggly, and I hate feeling like that. I remember taking LSD before I went to Disneyland. I started thinking about Mickey Mouse being a short, middle-aged man in a costume who hates his life. Those drugs can be dangerous if you don’t go into it positively” – and being a bit of a wild child, pre Brad Pitt and her mother earth look. But still people are forgiving.
It must be the lips.
The new mum of twins has said in the past that she’s happy to share the shape of her inner demons with the world as she thinks it’ll help others and she isn’t ashamed of being human and all that entails.
(Although she’s apparently asking for £5m for the first pictures of her twins, with the money going to charity.)
They’re not so understanding of a girl from the Rassau with “issues” though.
I’m no Jolie, it has to be said. Neither am I particularly jolly these days.
I am, however, still eating, still feeling ugly (there, I’ve said it) ... and still sharing.
And still wishing you could buy patience by the pound next to the pork pies in Tesco.

Can a hypnotherapist find the off switch ...

... for Hannah’s corned beef and crisp sandwich cravings?

I was desperate, desperate, yes desperate, to be upbeat here this week. I even thought of practising “nice” in the mirror.

But that would involve looking at myself and I simply couldn’t face it. Oops, there I go again. See, can’t help the slump or my nature.

But can you? I read something the other day which gave me hope.

I considered it while sucking on a Mini Milk.

“I’ve always been curious about what it is that allows some people to change the course of their lives, despite long odds,” writes Tom Shroder in the Washington Post.

“As far as weight loss goes, I was one of the lucky ones. Thirty to 40 pounds overweight in my early teens, I was regularly taunted by schoolyard bullies.

“Something humiliating must have occurred on the day I came home too depressed to do anything but lie on the couch and brood. I sank down deep into the cushions and felt sorry for myself. Then I began to get angry.

“I hated being the fat boy in school. I hated the way I looked in the mirror. And, more than anything else, I hated the feel of the swollen belly I carried everywhere I went.

“And then I decided: I didn’t want to be fat anymore. I refused to be fat anymore.

“From that moment, I simply did what it took to lose the belly. I changed the way I ate, changed the way I thought about food. It wasn’t particularly difficult. There was never any doubt in my mind that the pain of changing was insignificant compared with the pain of remaining the way I was.

“Losing weight is one thing. All I had to do was talk myself out of eating too many French fries.”

So, it’s that simple, is it? Deciding one day to stop eating chips? Thinking – no, believing – that you can be more than you are by weighing less than you do today? Refusing – his word, not mine – to be dissatisfied?

But how do you change the way you feel about yourself?

The other day I decided to get hypnotised to see if I could think myself thinner.

I met this wonderful man, Simon Richards DCHyp, MBCSHA, GQHP (and quite sexy really) at his Corpus Clinical Hypnotherapy offices in Bridgend.

I went after feeling that I’d exhausted every diet known to mankind, save the skimmed milk and Bovril one (yup, I’ve been reading up on gastric bands).

I also knew of a few people who’ve gone to see him who are still reaping the rewards.

I went with an open mind, and huge hope that he’d find something in my subconscious noodle that would flip a switch, make my self-esteem fatter and my need to self-medicate with carbs slimmer.

He told me that a small number of people don’t succumb to hypnotherapy, but they are usually those who don’t really want it and who fail to relax or let their mind become open to positive suggestions.

My mother had suspicions that I wouldn’t “go under” as she put it.

“The constitution of an ox, you’ve got my love,” she said to me. I stopped short of asking her if she was confusing constitution with bottom size.

I thought about this while nibbling on six chicken nuggets and a strawberry milkshake as I waited to go in, convincing myself that it would be my last meal of rubbish (idiot, idiot, bloody idiot!). I tried to relax, honest I did, but all I could think about while he was trying to suggest wonderful new ways of thinking to me was whether or not he was looking at my fat belly.

There I was, sat in this fancy rocking chair, and all I could concentrate on was my belly, my boobs, my short-sleeved top, my chin, why I had those nuggets, my flat hair, that obnoxious, charmless man, stage hypnotist Kenny Craig from Little Britain saying to me: “Look at your thighs, at your thighs, the thighs, the thighs, not around the thighs, the thighs, don’t look around the thighs… click… you’re under.”

Under. Rhymes with thunder. Yeah, you’ve got it, thunder thighs.

Hypnotherapy, and diets, work on other people. I’ve seen the evidence in my own office.

So why am I so resistant to thinking I can change, even though it’s the one things I want most in the world (apart from McDonald’s extending their breakfast menu past 10.30am)?

Stop doing things I like in order to do things I’d don’t, maybe.

One, two, three… and I’m back in the room. I’m just thankful it’s not in the all-you-can-eat buffet of my mind today.

WE’D only got so far into our mini break ...

... as the Merthyr to Brecon roundabout when I started crying. I don’t know what it is about me and tears lately, but we seem to be best pals.

Significant (thin) Other was giving me a row – well, when I say “row” what I mean was a shake of the head, followed by some finger twitching and mild foot tapping.

Someone fancy was on the radio, a name which I hoped he wouldn’t recognise. But the man who knows what I’m thinking before my thoughts have begun, jumped on the name and started dancing around on the connection between us, saying that he was thrilled, thrilled, thrilled that I would soon be on the same celebrity panel as posh paws on Radio Wales, mixing it up with the great and the good.

Then I broke the news that I wouldn’t be going, that I’d made up an excuse (it was valid and genuine but I could have wriggled) not to go.

He was, to put it mildly, disappointed, rumbling on about the way he gets frustrated because I throw opportunities away with the dexterity of an Olympian.

“Why’ve you done it this time?” he asked me. “The Same Old S*** is it? I’m clueless as to why you have such a low opinion of yourself. You’re fabulous! I wish you’d snap out of it, you’re stopping yourself from doing so much.”

The SOS in question is my subterranean self-esteem. It’s an odd beast, fed on an abundance of carbohydrates and crusty rolls, Yorkshire puddings, Boots Shapers meals and cheese and onion pasties to shut it up.

Frankly, it all comes down to feeling unsightly. I’m not embarrassed to say this is what I think or feel. Nobody’s going to point at me, are they? Nope. And I’m not lying or saying I’ve had a gastric band. Now THAT would be something worth shouting about.

To be honest, I’m so familiar with thinking this way it’s become the norm for me.

And I think it’s all to do with the fact that I feel fat. And ugly. Fugly! Well would you look at that. Copyright Jones.

It’s not the kind of Fugly that comes from having a spot on the end of your nose, the wrong kind of shoes on or a flat hair day.

It’s an incapacitating feeling that leaves me kind of helpless. My beast of burden doesn’t stop me being who I am, or going to work or chopsing or arguing or thinking big thoughts.

Instead it’s a silent thwarter that has turned me into the most self-conscious and unsociable bugger.

And the worst thing of all? I’m entirely responsible. Me. Fugly Jones. I know it, but I can’t shake loose of it.

Most of the time, it isn’t a problem for me as I just live with it. It just IS.

But it becomes an issue when I’m asked to do stuff by friends, when I’m invited places, when I’m asked to go on a panel and just be me. And I just want to say no as it’s the easier option. Because then, I don’t have to worry about what to wear, or anticipate the fall-out by well-intentioned others who simply don’t get this side of me and tussle with me when I say I’d rather not do something.

I was thinking about this while sitting in a café in New Quay, just past Plwmp. Talk about being haunted by your body image.

Convincing myself that I think better while either smoking a cigarette and drinking a latte or stuffing my face, I took the opportunity while S(t)O was off taking pictures to order a bacon roll on the sly (it was less than an hour after breakfast after all) to help with my mental ruminating.

I was about to dig into my notion of Fugly (and a crispy bacon roll), thinking that if nobody saw me doing it I wasn’t really eating, when he came round the corner just as the waitress was delivering my sneaky treat.

As ever, S(t)O didn’t chastise me, or venture any kind of opinion in fact – I got in there first anyway.

But it all went horribly wrong because not only was I caught out, when I opened the roll to check on the fat content it had butter on it. Butter! Who the hell puts butter on a bacon roll? It should be a mortal sin.

So he ate it, enjoying every mouthful as it didn’t taste of guilt – while my interpretation of it backfired, leaving me empty in more ways than one again.

I avoided Plwmp on the way back home. And butter on bacon rolls as soon as I got in. But the jury’s still out on whether I can shake off Fugly.

I’VE just looked up the word ‘holistic’.

Apparently it has something to do with ‘emphasising the importance of the whole and the interdependence of its parts’.

And there I was thinking it was all to do with vitamins and yoga. Shows how much I know.

The reason I’m showing so much interest in the word, now firmly in my head illuminated under a spotlight of hope, is because Fern Britton has put her remarkable weight loss down to taking an ‘holistic approach’ to it.

To be honest, I’m still not sure what it means. It’s a word that means something in the abstract to me, like low-fat cheese.

Yet it seems somewhat out of reach. Whatever, it’s worked for Fern who’s looking like Little Britton now, despite looking fabulous before.

Fern, who was reportedly concerned that at her biggest she was an unhealthy role model for other women, has quietly introduced a new fitness regime and eating plan, avoiding faddy diets in favour of – yes, you guessed it, an holistic approach.

Oh, and Ryvita. And cycling.

As such, she’s slimmed down from a size 20 – some papers have taken bets and put her at a size 24 – to what looks like a trim 14.

And how does she feel about it, about achieving what I’ve been struggling to do since the day dot?

Surprisingly unsmug and unfazed.

“I don’t feel any different. Genuinely, no different at all. People expect me to be saying something else, but no,” she says.

However Fern, 50, saw the years approaching the Big Five O as the turning point in her life and the motivation behind trying to lose weight.

“For me it took a long time to feel happy about myself and to know who I was,” she admits.

“I’m a late starter so it’s only in the last two or three years that I’ve felt happy with who I am. I think it’s to do with happiness in my personal life, feeling loved and loving someone in return. To feel the love between you is fantastic.”

I feel loved, and adored, it has to be said.

So I couldn’t help but wonder whether if my Significant (thin) Other started to tell me my ‘at home’ look of scabby tracksuit trousers, equally scabby top with bleach marks, no make-up and no bra possibly wasn’t my best, I may be spurred on more.

There’s a lot to be said for contentment and somebody thinking you’re fabulous, flat hair and inflated bits ’n’ all.

Back to Fern: “I think when you get older, more mature, you can see the chapters that have happened to you.

“In my 20s I was working and, unbeknown to me, creating some form of career ladder. I didn’t know that at the time, I was just thinking, ‘Oh, this is OK.’

“Then in my 30s I was married to my first husband and had my children.”

Fern has twins from her first marriage, and two daughters from her second to celebrity chef Phil Vickery. After the birth of twins Jack and Harry (now 14) she suffered crippling post-natal depression.

She says: “I had the most terrible post-natal depression that manifested itself in deep unhappiness. Then I think because I felt I had to be strong and protective for the children, I got larger to feel stronger.”

She later had a daughter, Grace, now 11, and then six-year-old Winnie with Vickery, whom she married in 2007.

But in her late 40s she began to consider her weight, which means that I have less than four years to go before my big epiphany. Yet I wish it were tomorrow.

Fern says: “I thought: ‘I’m not going to have any more children, they’re safe and secure, they don’t need me to be the lioness looking after them, so let’s not perpetuate this.

“I thought, I can be like this for the rest of my life or think, 50, that’s interesting, let’s change.

“I wanted to do something for ‘me’ because being a wife and mum and working, you have no time in the day for yourself.”

And, about two years ago, she started cycling.

On reading this, I went to Halfords on Saturday. I didn’t get further than the burger van parked outside. But my mind was willing at the very least, even if my belly was craving fried onions.

Fern saw an advert in the paper for fertility expert and television scientist Lord Robert Winston’s charity Women For Women, which raises money to help improve health services for mothers and mothers-to-be.

She says: “It was a 400km cycle ride in Egypt, spread across five days. Last year I did India and this year I’m doing Cuba.”

She trains on a 14-gear hybrid bike three days a week, for an hour each session. As the event gets closer, she then does two consecutive days of about 40 miles each day and towards the end 10 or 12 miles a day.

She does that AND presents This Morning AND looks after her kids. I couldn’t find the time with a map.

Perhaps living with a chef makes it easier, having low- calorie meals cooked for you.

But Fern says: “Being married to a chef is like being married to a builder. Your house is the one that doesn’t get any attention! And so although Phil cooks beautifully, and the six of us sit down to a family supper together, it’s very often just a normal family meal.”

She confesses to not having lost her sweet tooth though.

“I adore sugar, that’s my weakness. I could eat chocolate all day long. Well not all day... These days instead of buying a bar I’ll buy a small bag of chocolate buttons.”

Losing the weight has taken years off her and she’s much more confident – light years away from her depressed time.

She says: “Even Jonathan Ross joked: ‘You’re getting too skinny’, which was very sweet of him, and my daughter’s told me my bosoms are sinking slowly, but those were the only comments!”

So as Mam Jones says – someone who’s lost five stone too despite being physically challenged – if Fern can do it, I can too.

Maybe another trip to Halfords, with nose pinchers on, is on the cards tomorrow.