obesity
Are we really going to abandon Brexit because of a Mars bar shortage?
The nice French doctor looked beadily at the screen. There were the results of my tests, in irrefutable detail. They…
The best thing about Christmas in France? It’s all over in a day
Just back from a few days in Rome — the perfect small metropolis for ‘street-haunting’, as Cyril Connolly described his…
I’d rather be fat-shamed than have cancer
Sofie Hagen is a young Danish comic I admire. I didn’t see her most recent show, Dead Baby Frog, but…
The fat tax fallacy
James Cracknell, the athlete turned anti-obesity campaigner, was the subject of sniggering and derision in April when he said that…
Our big fat problem
The good news is that Theresa May has dropped the threat to withdraw universal free school meals. Thank God (and…
A cacophony of complaint
What sort of monster gives a bad review to a book by someone who was gang raped as a 12-year-old…
I nourish my dream of a fat pill
As good conversation should, the talk meandered from the serious to the playful. One of the serious topics was overseas…
Stop lecturing fatties – it’s really not their fault
I’ve noticed for some time now that thin people, genuinely slim ones, have a secret loathing of fatties. Kindly though…
Fat-shaming works. Why else would I heave myself up and down hills for hours every day?
We have been contemplating moving to the North, for a variety of unassailable reasons. One is the chance to gloat…
Socrates and Galen on the Great British Bake Off
As the national girth expands by the second, Auntie, never backward about lecturing us on the topic, continues to glory…
The big fat myths of our ‘obesity epidemic’
Like all failing projects, or popular cults, the NHS needs scapegoats. Britain’s health service is plagued by an endless stream…
Living next door to someone rich, and beside a motorway, makes you fat and your blood pressure soar
I wrote last week about a swarm of bees that had attached itself to a wall of my house, as…
David Starkey’s diary: Why don’t we celebrate the triumphs of private dentistry?
To the dentist. And for an extraction. I hadn’t had a tooth out in decades. But the twinges when I…
Sorry Katie Hopkins, but I’m not dieting. Ever
I’m a very off-message type of fat broad; one who gladly admits she reached the size she is now solely…
The mobility scooter plague
How many of the people driving mobility scooters these days actually need a mobility scooter? The invention of the vehicle…
Why are there so many fat people in pictures of food banks?
Were you aware that the famous actor Andy Garcia was born with a foetus growing out of his left shoulder?…
Miriam Gross’s diary: As a qualified teacher, I say let in the ‘untrained’
I knew that the historian Sir Richard Evans was a rather abrasive and quarrelsome man, but I was staggered by…
Farewell, Speccie
So we are all going to have to pay for fatties to have stomach bands and bypasses, are we? It…
The big fat lie about cholesterol
Though I’m not generally big on banning stuff, there’s one substance I would prohibit without a moment’s hesitation — probably on…
Spectator letters: The trouble with religion, alternatives to HS2, and whisky-drinking dogs
Old cabby’s tale Stephen Rommei’s London cabby story (Diary, 7 June) reminded me of catching a cab one cold night…
Why Weight Watchers doesn’t deserve taxpayers’ money
Porky, flabby, lardy? Obese — and morbidly so? Yup. That’s us. We knew already that two out of three of…
'Too Fat Polka', and other politically incorrect songs of the 1940s
When I was a child, growing up in Hertfordshire just after the second world war, my parents employed a cook…