Every New Year we are bombarded with information about diet, obesity, diabetes and all other things brought on by Christmas excess.

I am no different, feeling a bit depressed to see any lingering signs of concave turning increasingly convex, courtesy of the pointless eating of mince pies, quality street sweets and lashings of cheese.

Throw in some Real Ale and few bottles of plonk and you really are in business.

Combined with winter sedantry behaviour, the results of over-eating are all too obvious yet we are still bombarded with bleeding obvious facts, figures, diet plans and weight watching campaigns that cost good money…fuck knows what our ancestors would make of it all?

I saw some old pictures of my Dad an all his work colleagues from the 1950’s the other day; they were all built like greyhounds courtesy of post war rationing and compulsory sports clubs.

Just the other day, I heard some government health expert (who probably earns a fortune) on Radio 5 saying (in a serious tone) that ‘office cake culture’ can lead to obesity. Who carried out that study on behalf of the tax payer? Sherlock Holmes or Poirot?

Then I watched a TV programme the other night about what we eat. After all the technical complexities of the human diet were explained, they basically told us what we all know, or at least, should know.

That’s right folks, if you eat fresh fruit, vegetables and meat, and exercise regularly, you will not put on weight (unless of course you have a diagnosed thyroid condition).

If you eat cakes, battered sausages and chocolate whilst sat on your arse in front of your PC or watching Eastenders, you are in deep shit and heading down a one way street to type two diabetes.

You don’t need to give your cash to some patronising weight watchers woman to solve your problem. You just need to accept you like cake and your are prepared to pay the consequences, or you can have a banana instead (banana cake doesn’t count).

I am too fat at the moment courtesy of middle age and a Christmas of too much munching and drinking when I am not even hungry; it has to stop so I can attempt another season of cricket without heart failure.

As a nation we need to accept the truth and that truth is that what goes in must be burnt off, rather than finding someone or something else to blame.

I’ll give you a diet plan:

1/ Eat fresh food

2/ Do some excercise

That’ll be £10:00 please, see you next Thursday.