Boy, you're gonna carry that weight

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Since returning from holiday to find weather that would have had Noah building a submarine, I’ve been flat out spending my normal layabout time watching the gutters overflowing and catching up on emails and post.

I’ve come to resent losing my playtime spent with my best friend, the TV remote, so I’m gutted to see this week that scientists have said our friendship will soon be over. The boffins predict that we’ll all soon ditch the remote and simply be waving our hand from the sofa to interact with the TV to turn it on, make the channels change, or the brightness increase. I’m guessing that by sticking up one finger we’ll be able to turn off Jeremy Kyle.

This is to be known as Gesture Interact Technology or GIT for short, which strikes me as an unfortunate choice of name as, in future, certainly with my wife, the idea of another old git in the TV room won’t go down well at all.

Anyway, instead of catching up on my recordings of Dexter and CSI, I now find Edward Scissorhands would recognise his lost relation as my hands are covered in paper cuts and I still have yet more bundles of mail to open. So if you’ve sent me an unsolicited large cheque then this is why I haven’t yet written to say thanks. If you sent me a bill or begging letter, it never arrived.

Everything seems to fall by the wayside after a long holiday and my life at the moment revolves around playing catch up. Papers go unread, calls unreturned, and my visits to the gym are now about as frequent as my visits to gay discos. I’m finding myself thinking of walking sideways as I try to fit through doors and I’ve also had to get used to a new phenomenon when I turn over during the night. Seconds after moving, I hear my belly follow the rest of my body through and flop on the bed beside me. If I had a water bed they’d feel the tides change from Boston to Bali.

Still, I comfort myself with the old saying that good things come to those with weight. Or did I mishear that?

Perhaps I should get those Spanx pants advertised on Shopping TV with a thirty day money back guarantee. They start at your knees and come up to your chest, holding the fat in so tightly that you can’t breathe and, consequently, you die and then lose weight very quickly. I think that’s why they never get anyone asking for a refund.

After the holiday, at first I felt guilty not working up a sprint each day air kissing friends at the gym before leaving my sweat splashed all over the running machine and cross trainer ready for the next fitness fanatic to slip on, but I soon adapted. I now get all the fruit I need from chocolate raisins, my vegetables come as pizza toppings, and my daily stretches last as long as it takes to tie my laces. As for a sauna, I’m getting that twice a day sitting on London’s sweltering tube trains. No one’s complained yet about me sitting there naked but I have had a few requests that I might at least put a towel down first.

So it seems to me as life returns to normal that I have two options now. Either I get fit and slim down, or I go to Doctor Showbiz for plastic surgery and get the fat hoovered up and given to a deserving cause like, say, Girls Aloud. The doctors draw the line at the idea of Victoria Beckham getting injected with my excess pork as they say I have what’s medically known as discerning fat and that it would reject her.

I met Joan Rivers this week and she was talking about her frequent plastic surgery which her grandson describes as “Granny New Face”, and she says that since her operations she now can’t tell a lie as she’s scared her real nose grows back. Perhaps then the surgery route is out for me.

So that leaves the fitness thing and, as someone who gets obsessed when he starts a gym routine, I felt bad and thought I should have made an effort on Wednesday when I interviewed cyclist Chris Hoy, triple gold medal winner at this year’s Olympics. Chris has thighs which are each sixty six centimetres around, which is about the same distance as I cycle in twelve months.

Of course standing on the podium three times to hear your national anthem played cannot compare with the honour of being interviewed by me, but Chris managed to contain his excitement pretty well and let me wear the medals. He leaves them in his hotel’s safe during the day and sleeps with them on at night, which must annoy his girlfriend Sarra who gets black eyes every time he turns over quickly.

Chris goes to the gym seven days a week, eats fresh air, and keeps fit by cycling twice daily to Australia and back with a fully grown hippopotamus in his backpack. He kindly didn’t ask the question of when my waters were due to break but could offer no advice on weight loss I was willing to take.

I also chatted with Gok Wan, fashion presenter of TV’s How To Look Good Naked, and I asked him what he’d recommend. Gok looks great but used to be over 22 stones, which is 308 pounds and heavier than the mass at the centre of a black hole. He recommended I keep my black hole closed and stop eating so much.

So that’s it then. I’m going on a diet and I’ll try to follow his advice. I’ll keep you posted on progress but expect me to be very grumpy.