We are often told by medical experts and government officials that the UK is in the flabby grip of an obesity epidemic although, frankly, you’d have to live in a monastery or be completely housebound with no television to be unaware of this fact. The briefest of visits to your local high street will certainly give you the impression that we have been taken over by thousands of invaders from the Planet Blubber or the offspring of Jabba the Hut!

It’s sometimes hard to make your way down supermarket aisles, blocked as they are by huge beasts loading their trolleys with frozen pizzas, bogof own-brand sausages and multipacks of Walkers crisps. Fastfood shops are packed full of customers salivating at the thought of their 24 deepfried chicken pieces loaded into gallon size cardboard buckets and young girls, their huge guts bloated by a lifetime of chip fat and fried bread, stand around swigging cola and smoking cheap cigarettes in between their feeds. Yes, welcome to modern Britain.

Don’t get me wrong, I realise that some people cannot help their weight, whether through some medical condition or inherited genes, and they deserve our sympathy, support and respect. The others not so.

The icing on the cake (burger more like) was a report earlier this week that some NHS hospitals are concerned that some of their patients are so grossly overweight that they are unable to pass through hospital CT scanners. The scanners were not designed for such large beings and so some hospitals are considering asking their local zoos if they can use their animal CT scanners which are evidently able to scan patients of 30 stones and over! Apparently, this is a fairly common occurrence in the USA where they have had a problem with obesity for many years. Still, good to see that we are catching up.