When the Fat Lady Slims

You Are What You Eat Special: Michelle McManus (C4); Antisocial Old Buggers (C4)

IF you are what you eat, how many of us are white pudding suppers? Quite a few, judging by Scotland’s appalling heart disease statistics. So I was expecting the worst when we were told what 21- stone Pop Idol winner Michelle McManus actually ate.

As the Glasgow singer’s food intake scrolled down the screen from three portions of pasta and half-a- dozen sausages through pizza, garlic bread and chicken Caesar salad to three bowls of cornflakes, four rolls and 36-andahalf pints of squash it did seem a lot to consume in one day.

But no, we were asked to believe this was all she ate in a week.

Likewise the 14 glasses of wine, two bottles of lager, eight whisky and cokes and a couple of sambucas were not a good Weegie night out but Michelle’s entire seven- day intake.

The content was also less horrific than I expected nothing from the chippy, let alone a deep-fried Mars Bar, in fact no chocolate at all.

Either Michelle suffered from the world’s most sluggish metabolism, incapable of burning calories, or she was telling high- cholesterol porkies.

Ah, but, come to think of it, the commentary did say only that her weekly intake included what was on the list. Mine includes at least one lettuce leaf, but I’m not owning up to the rest.

As a circumferentially challenged man whose byline photograph is mercifully cut off at the neck, I do not have to look good to do my job.

A female pop star does, which is why Michelle attracted so much publicity for bucking the trend on Pop Idol.

When she won in 2003, she was a mere 18 stone an inspiration for fat women everywhere. When she put on an extra three stone, the heavy brigade cheered to hell with healthy living, food fascism and the oppressive cult of the body beautiful.

She was famous not so much for being a singer as for being a fat singer something you are not supposed to get away with unless your name is Mama Cass, Demis Roussos or Pavarotti. But Michelle, having exhausted the possibilities of being a ‘morbidly obese’ songbird, successfully rebranded herself last night as a rather less bulky television personality with the help of ‘holistic nutritionist’ Gillian McKeith.

Putting two sparky Scotswomen together in a battle of the bulge should have led to fireworks, but the astonishing thing about Michelle was her cheerful self-control.

Having resolved, just before last Christmas, to cut out junk food and booze, she did exactly what she was told by the fearsome Miss McKeith. Not once did we see her pig out or land up in a skip after a binge-drinking girls’ night out.

Nor, apart from a clip from Pop Idol, did we see her sing a curious omission, if it’s such a big part of her life. We did, however, see her doing a few other things I could have done without.

One was confronting an 11-stone heap of beef fat, equal to the extra weight she was carrying about.

Another was Miss McKeith’s insistence that the state of a person’s stool was a clue to their health when analysing the rubbish Michelle put into her system.

‘She may have come first on Pop Idol, but will it be bottom marks on Poop Idol?’ trilled the commentary.

‘Although Michelle’s more used to performing No 1s than No 2s, she’s got no celebrity poo privileges and pops into the ladies to provide a sample.’

I’ll spare you the rest but, by the time they’d finished with the colonic irrigation, they’d done everything short of entering Michelle as a contestant in New Faeces.

After such horrors, getting her to eat fish and vegetables was not so terrible. Despite an aversion to food with eyes staring at her, she progressed from salmon and tuna to tackling fresh fish in her own kitchen.

See you, ya sea bass!

SHE toddled off like a lamb to the gym, went roller- skating and even survived a hen night in Dublin without alcohol passing her lips. As a result, she lost five stone in five months and donated most of her designer-label Black’s of Greenock wardrobe to Oxfam, with no apparent irony.

She was chirpy, funny suggesting her old bras could be used as hammocks and focused.

Healthwise and careerwise, I suspect this programme has done her a power of good.

I WAS sure Antisocial Old Buggers would include at least one reference to Victor Meldrew, but the three real-life AOBs they came up with didn’t need his help.

At 88, Alexander Muir is the oldest person in Britain to have an Asbo imposed on him for shouting and swearing at neighbours and parking his car in their drives.

He has been fined Pounds 1,250 and threatened with jail.

Posh former UN worker Rosamunde Lewis-Kite has been banned from all her local pubs and faced eviction at the age of 87 for entertaining noisy youngsters, some of them criminals, in her sheltered accommodation.

Meanwhile, Jan Copeman, 69, has been banned from Battersea Park in London for campaigning against the local council allowing private corporate events there and expressing his feelings to the authority’s staff through obscene language and gestures.

Mr Muir has been grumpy and obsessed with complaining since his wife died, but widower Mr Copeman and divorcee Mrs Lewis-Kite came across as delightfully eccentric.

For all three, protest and revolt are a way of showing society they are still alive and kicking. As Dylan Thomas put it: ‘Old age should burn and rave at close of day.’ Long live the old ravers, say I but maybe not next door to me.