Fighting obesity one chicken and beetroot salad at a time

When I saw the bench rota in the whips office this morning, I don’t mind admitting to you that I groaned. I was covering the bench when Alan Johnson was making his announcement on the government’s plans to tackle obesity.

“The core of the problem is simple: we eat too much and we do too little exercise. The solution is more complex,” said Alan Johnson in the House. To Alan, that was the opening line of a very intelligent statement on how the government was going to encourage people to live healthier lives. To me, it was the understatement of the decade.

I arrived to the debate a little late. The chicken breast (skinless) and beetroot salad had taken a longer to consume than the normal lunchtime bacon sandwich. I rushed into the chamber a little flustered and sweaty. I could swear the other whips were sniggering as I collapsed into the green benches. There was friend and colleague Tony Cunningham, the whip who runs for an hour each day, nodding vigorously at everything Alan said. He looked at me in pity.

Mike Foster, the MP for Worcester, had spent the previous day telling me how he was going to take surf boarding lessons with his two kids. Somewhere in Wesminster he was polishing his board and ironing his bermudas. And laughing at my misfortune.

It was a relief to see porky Mark Pritchard and porkier Tony Baldry on the Tory benches. The Labour benches seemed full of Olympians. Tony Baldry made some comment about eating more carrots and losing a couple of stones but only if Alan visited his local hospital. David Kidney raised a point about breastfeeding.

Mark Pritchard was bobbing up and down so often I thought he was going to faint. It all became a blur. I think my blood sugar levels must had plunged to a new low.

UPDATE: Spelling mistakes changed. Thanks to comprehensive boy Mr P. for putting me right.