YES sir, your bum does look big in that. Madam, that dress you wore yesterday? The wedding planners have called, they’d like their marquee back. As for you, person in the mirror, I wouldn’t be planning any holidays where they hunt with harpoons. 

Tad harsh? In my defence I am following medical advice, albeit stretching it a little. A bit like those jeans I attempted to get into after Christmas. 

Fiona McQueen, Scotland’s chief nursing officer, is too nice a person to make cruel jokes. She had a serious message to convey this week, and she knew of what she spoke. Despite the fact it was part of her job to advise people on how to stay healthy, she was seven stones overweight by the time she was in her mid-50s and, by her own admission, “chronically unfit”. 

Yet no-one said a word about not practising what she preached and putting her health at risk. Why? Because they were afraid of using the F-word. 

“‘Fat’ is a horrible, uncompromising word,” she wrote in the Mail, “but sometimes it’s the one word people need to hear. It’s understandable not to want to hurt people’s feelings, but I think we are reaching a point where we simply can’t do that any more.”

She is right. Some 65 per cent of us are now overweight or obese. As an NHS Health Scotland survey showed recently, only 29 per cent of us know obesity when we see it, and in general we underestimate the dreadful impact it can have on our health, such as increasing the risk of developing some cancers, not to mention diabetes and heart attacks. 

Instead of the old EEC wine lakes and butter mountains (remember them?) we are blithely sitting in the path of an avalanche of lard, just waiting to bury us early. But still those fish suppers, biscuits, cakes, and fizzy drinks call. 

Why are we not treating this situation like the health emergency it is? Well, that’s the chewy part of the problem. As Ms McQueen acknowledged, the causes of obesity are complicated, and often “deeply personal”. You could say the same of other things we do that harm our own and others’ health and wellbeing. Smoking, drinking too much, working to excess, eating badly, not taking exercise – all the stuff that little devil on our shoulder tells us is okay, but fundamentally we know is not. 

Society is now so collectively touchy about being categorised as too heavy (or too thin) that we have invented a term for it: “body shaming”. The latest celebrity to speak out against this tactic is Scarlett Moffat, Gogglebox contributor turned TV presenter. After being snapped on holiday, she responded on Twitter: “When online papers/magazines try their hardest to use unflattering photos and drag women down do they realise what they’re doing to people’s mental health? I understand it’s part of the parcel of being in the public eye but body shaming NEEDS TO STOP!”

Hear, hear. No reasonable person would think it was okay to publicly shame someone because of their weight, or anything else.  But nor do we take kindly to friends and relatives trying, ever so discreetly and kindly, to have a word. They mean well, we know that. Moreover, nine times out of ten the object of their concern knows they have a problem and would dearly love to do something about it. 

Why, then, is it so difficult to have The Conversation, the one where you confess how worried you are about X and the other person says, “Yes, quite right, I’m going to do something about it.” A  more likely result is hurt feelings all round and even more self-loathing on the part of the person who cannot say no to the thing that is harming them. 

Anyone who has tried to cut back or quit will know how tush-achingly difficult and boring it is. Ms McQueen, by eating healthily and taking exercise, has lost that excess seven stone and feels all the better for it. But she had dieted before and put the weight back on, so why was this time different?

Because she had the only conversation that ultimately matters, the one where she looked herself straight in the eye and exercised some tough love. As she describes it, “Something clicked. I looked at myself and said: “You’re fat, Fiona. FAT. It was the truth and I needed to hear it.”
We know government and manufacturers have a part to play in tackling obesity and other ills, be it introducing minimum pricing for alcohol, or a sugar tax. Judging by the market for self-help books, there is a large and growing constituency out there receptive to a call to arms. 

None of it is any use, however, until we’ve had The Conversation with ourselves, or, if you are feeling brave, each other. Good luck. 

The Herald:

FANS of watch-through-the-fingers political scandal are being spoiled by the antics of Ukip leader Henry Bolton. 

The death spiral of his leadership began when it emerged the 54-year-old had left this third wife for a 25-year-old model. Just let all those numbers sink in a moment.

Worse was to come when a Sunday paper reported that the model in question, Jo Marney, had sent racist text messages. Having pledged to end the relationship at the beginning of the week, Mr Bolton was photographed on Wednesday having dinner a deux with his supposedly former lover. History does not relate whether the waiter asked: “And what would your daughter like to drink?”

To demonstrate they were definitely not an item again, the Ukip leader published taxi receipts showing she went home to her parents’ house that night. Classy. 

Mr Bolton’s fate will be decided tomorrow by Ukip’s National Executive Committee. I wouldn’t bother bringing sandwiches to the meeting, mate, I don’t think you’ll be detained too long. 

The Herald: OKAY all you beautiful people, who is going to Davos next week? Me neither, alas.

Every year around the end of January I come down with a bad case of Davos envy when contemplating the World Economic Forum event in Switzerland. 

It could be the high profile guest list, drawn from politics, business and the arts. This year the gathering of 2500 (just 21 per cent women) includes Donald Trump, Emmanuel Macron, Theresa May and Labour’s John McDonnell, plus Cate Blanchett and Elton John. Most participants, and the ones who pay for the bash, are business bods. Alternatively, it might be the many exciting workshops aiming to make the planet a better place. 

Who am I kidding? It’s the parties, and the chance to dress up in fancy winter wear. Unable to go (washing my hair, since you ask) I’ll have to content myself as usual with watching on TV and seeing which journo from the 230 attending has the best anorak. As to who pays for all this high-performance, big-ticket wear, that is all part of the mystery and magic of Davos.