There is no sacred right to be a lazy fat slob

If political reality means we can’t tax the overweight, then at least let’s have tax breaks for those who bother to take exercise, writes unashamed metrosexual Dan Jones

Hands up if you employ a personal trainer. Actually, that’s a trick question. If you can raise your arm without wincing in pain then either you don’t have a personal trainer, or yours is letting you slack off. (Get a new one.)

For those of you with your arms pinned to the sides of your bodies from the sheer build-up of lactic acid — ask your trainer — well done. A few years ago your friends might have sneered at you and called you a metrosex-ual. But this is 2009, and having a trainer now puts you in the same club as a great number of high-fliers, captains of industry, newspaper proprietors and Academy award-winning actors. The Spectator is definitely the magazine for you. Feel free to reward yourself with a high-protein, meal-substitute snack bar.

But hang on. There’s bad news. I’m afraid that if you are employing someone to keep you lean, mean and red in the face, you may also be mentally disturbed.

Let me explain. Despite the fact that Britain is fast catching up with America in the deceptively fleet-footed race to be the fattest nation on the planet, there are many people who are more concerned that we are becoming dangerously neurotic about our body image.

The theory goes something like this. Popular culture today celebrates images of extreme and freakish youthfulness, thinness and pert-breastedness (female), and six-packed muscularity (male). As a result we are led to associate only the very physically beautiful with true success. But the sheer impossibility of attaining these sorts of physiques is leading to a national epidemic of self-loathing.