Say it loud, I'm fat and I'm proud

If I was Ben Elton, and it was 1986 and I was wearing a badly fitting spangly suit, red tie and a chip on my shoulder, I might just use this blog as an excuse to start banging on about the politics of obesity.

Because while it is obviously out of order to make jokes about people on the basis of their skin colour, religion, physical ability, sexual orientation or gender, taking the p*** out of fat people has never really been off limits.

Even while the wave of Political Correctness was breaking on the shore of right-on comedy, fat people were still fair game.

The problem is that it is just so easy and I am just as guilty as anybody of cracking cheap jokes at the expense of fat people.

But I do find it interesting the ease with which people mock the overweight, without any consideration for their feelings.

Sitting in the pub or at work for example, you probably wouldn’t start making jokes about black people, or disabled people. But it seems perfectly acceptable to do so about fatties in their presence.

I’m not being over sensitive I promise, just pointing out a few observations. It is also interesting how fat people are portrayed in TV and films.

Take the current ad campaign for a building society featuring the rival bank manager who says credit card charges abroad are like leaving a tip and that he likes a bit of bubbly at the Christmas party, you know the one.

He is played by an actor who is overweight, and the character is untrustworthy, greedy, a bit stupid and generally unpleasant.

He is also a bit scruffy and has his shirt hanging out at the front, so obviously can’t be interested in his own appearance and lacks self-respect.

This is in sharp contrast with the manager of the featured building society who is young, slim, good looking and wears a sharp well-made suit. You know you can trust him, he won’t rip you off unlike that greedy fat git in the other place.

Now, I’m not trying to turn this into a sociology lecture, but as I have been carrying a few extra stone over the last couple of years, it is something you can’t help but notice.

Speaking personally, being overweight (self-inflicted I accept) is horrendous and the experiences I have gone through have been at times humiliating, embarrassing, hurtful and extremely frustrating, particularly when surrounded by images of chisel jawed James Bonds and football players.

So, getting to the point eventually, all of this is really about trying to take back the word fat, to regain ownership of it for people who really know what it means.

Say it loud, I’m fat and I’m proud. Well, maybe not proud exactly, because obviously I am trying to lose as much weight as I can.

During the process of putting on weight you spend a lot of time in denial, and believing that you can still squeeze into those shirts and jeans and still look good.

That denial can keep you fat for years without doing anything about it. But once you hold your podgy little hands up and say to the world, I am fat, you can actually start to deal with it, in my experience.

And you don’t have to look like a slob just because you’re overweight, they do actually make clothes in sizes bigger than the ones you wished you still fitted into, and I don’t mean just wearing baggy black t-shirts.

I have discovered that black really isn’t that slimming when you’re knocking on the door of 19st, unless you happen to be a 7ft basketball player.

The great thing will be to keep those clothes for when you have lost all the weight and you can do the classic weight loss pic holding out the waistband of your oversize trousers.

It’s time to face facts and embrace the challenge, rather than hiding under the metaphoric duvet and wishing it would just go away.

I'll just get off my soapbox now, thanks.