ARE you fit? Or are you fit for nothing? I’m guessing that, at this time of year, some of you will be drawing up resolutions involving the dreaded words “exercise” and “more”, same as you did last year. And the year before that.

I’m not here to castigate you for being a slacker, but to furnish you with the wisdom of a man who has seen it all and done hardly any of it.

After a while, the most you can aim for is to be told that you are “fit for your age”. I take that as a compliment, but I know people – particularly ladies – who go radge at it. They see it, I guess, as referring to their age rather than their fitness.

But you can’t get away from age as easily as you can from fitness. Phil Coulson, in the Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D sci-fi TV series, said “fit for your age” was “something you say to an old person”.

But I’ve been getting that since I was 50. It starts in middle age. (Coulson also said, incidentally: “I don’t sweat, I glisten.”)

I was actually very fit for a period, training three times a week for an arduous activity that remains my secret, and going to the gym on top of that. I was even vegetarian and didn’t drink. I look back at that person now and say: “Who the hell were you?”

Was I happy back then? No, of course not. I have never been happy. Is it the one where folk are laughing and relaxed? I think I’ve seen it on TV.

But it’s possible to argue that I was less miserable than usual. You may have noticed this if you do work out: chemicals start floating about your brain and booting you up the morale. A couple of times, when I went to arduous exercise classes after a long break, I came out feeling as high as a kite.

The funny thing about that is it never, ever works the second time. You go back to the class and you’re just your usual self, although possibly better adjusted. I’ve noticed that the staff at gyms are often pleasant and well-balanced folk.

There must be something in the idea that the physical affects the mental. So, what to do?

My recommendation is little and not very often.

That way, you’re more likely to stick it out for the long haul. Less is more. If you do too much one time, you’ll find an excuse not to do it at all next time. It’s asking too much.

Of course, some people don’t feel this. Although they are very few, some people jog and jog every day, year after year. Their faces are grim. They look mentally ill and should probably be incarcerated. It doesn’t really do to become obsessed with activities in life. Try not to take more than a mild interest in anything, readers.

At the moment, I just go to the gym for an hour once or twice a week, and sometimes do some weird Chinese stuff out in the back garden. And no, madam, I don’t mean opium. I’m not in great shape.

But I haven’t got one of these male pregnant bellies either, and have found that wearing a T-shirt with a slogan across the chest can disguise one’s moobs.

If your motivation in doing exercise is to lose weight, rather than just to avoid dying, there’s only way to do this: eat less. Less is less, I’m afraid. It’s just the way of the world: rubbish.

In the meantime, I hope you have found this advice from my experience uplifting.

Now go and lift something. And remember: you’re not sweating, you’re glistening.

A cultured man

FOR all his snooty classical allusions, it was popular culture that Boris Johnson drew on for inspiration during the Brexit negotiations.

Referring to being free of the EU, the Prime Minister said Britain didn’t want to be “like Charlie Chaplin in Modern Times”: being released from jail, only to want back in after struggling with a life of freedom.

When the talks were deadlocked, he told EU chiefs: “We need to revive this process like that scene in Pulp Fiction, where they stick the adrenaline straight into Uma Thurman’s heart.”

The Prime Minister also referred to a Monty Python sketch “where we are trapped in the car with a giant hammer outside the gates to clobber us every time we drive out”.

He might also have mentioned the one featuring a dance where two chaps slap each other in the face with fish quotas, but probably not the one where the person looking for the Ministry of Arguments mistakenly goes to the Ministry of Abuse: “Don’t give me that, von der Leyen, you snotty-faced heap of parrot droppings.”

Five things we’ve learned this week

The Beano is aiming high this year. Having branched out into television shows, bosses at the morally uplifting comic have set their eyes on overtaking Disney, declaring: “We want Gnasher to become figuratively bigger than Mickey Mouse.” Sounds just Dandy.

Archaeologists have unearthed a snack bar from ancient Pompeii. It was decorated with ducks, a nymph and a rooster. Goat and snail remains were also found. Sounds a decent takeaway: “Goat supper, pickled snail and one of yir nymphs, please.”

Dressing up for dinner makes people eat more healthily, say Chinese researchers. Because they feel posh they eschew junk food like hamburgers and opt for salad. The number of people in Scotland dressing for dinner has been estimated at three.

St Mary’s Church parishioners in Whitby have given out leaflets stating: “Dracula is fiction.” The leading vampire’s association with the town attracts Goths, who blunder darkly about the churchyard. Sounds like a case of fangs for coming, but no fangs.

The year 2020 might have been characterised by paraphrasing a famous 1990s song: Things can only get worser. However, three quarters of Britlanders believe 2021 will be better than 2020, if still far from normal. Oh normal, how we crave thee.