Last updated 12:45, Wednesday, 04 June 2008

Wire my jaws, clamp my teeth, tightly band my gastrics - just don't feed me Ryvita. ANNE PICKLES looks at the latest diet craze of fibbing yourself thin

Fern Britton

Poor Fern Britton; she’s got herself into a proper tuck and no mistake. Would that be a tummy tuck by any chance? Near enough. Gastric banding... ouch!

On the Richter scale of world events, the shrinkage rate of a once Rubenesque TV presenter registers way down on the ground floor level of who-gives-a-damn. But Fern – onetime darling of daytime telly – has exposed something of a blot in her formerly flawless copybook.

She hasn’t been entirely honest about her massive weight loss. The chuckling one has been letting porkies slip into her easy banter. Now she looks really rather silly – though thin – and a bit of a let-down, to tell the truth.

Naughty, naughty Fern. All that coy, artificially sweetened humility about slimming being so simple really – just a matter of eating less, exercising more and staying focused. It was eyewash.

In the event, it was simpler than even she had made out. Ms Britton went under the surgeon’s knife to reduce her capacity for burger and bun binges. As a result all her podgy problems became little ones... nice work if you can afford it.

But why did she keep it a secret for two years? More interestingly, why did she choose to hoodwink millions of frustrated, exasperated fatties into believing that she had succeeded where they had failed?

The “If I can do it, anyone can” trick was a cruel fake. She couldn’t do it. Married to a gifted chef able to rustle up as many tasty, nutritious, low-calorie meals as she would need from here to eternally size zero – and she still couldn’t do it. So why suggest otherwise?

“As I know, many people are interested in my weight loss over the past two years. As interest is so high, I am making public, as a personal choice, that I had a gastric band operation two years ago,” she told viewers of ITV’s This Morning... a mere 24 months too late.

“I did this purely for myself and I would not wish to influence others to do the same. But for me it has worked and I am very pleased with the results.”

Fern is now a little cheesed off with some of the flak she has taken since making her statement of media encouraged honesty.

“Next time, if I have a face-lift or haemorrhoids or something, I will ring the Sunday papers straight away,” she snapped – already sounding like a grumpy thin person, instead of the jolly fat person she used to be.

But Fern’s a bright, wise, intelligent lady. She knows only too well she is deliberately missing the point.

News that Ms Britton had undergone the surgery followed speculation over her three-stone weight loss in weekend newspapers. Questions were asked about the speed and effectiveness of this magic diet of hers.

Only natural, since it had previously been reported that cycling, walking a family dog and eating less were the drivers behind the new svelte Fern. And everybody who has ever tried to drop a dress size for a wedding, a holiday or diminished mirror trauma knows – diets like that just don’t work,

Oh sure, they sound good enough in theory. They can even melt away a pound or seven in time. But slip back into normal eating – and living – after reaching goal and off you go again on the slippery return route to Fatsville.

Diets don't work. As a life-long battler with excess weight. I'm living proof that diets are doomed to fail.

I’ve tried them all. Over the years weight has dropped off, piled on again, fallen away, returned for a refit thanks to Weight Watchers, Cambridge, Rosemary Conley, Slimmers World, calorie counting, carb-discarding, cabbage diets, slimming pills (in desperation) and diuretics (against doctors orders).

But diets don’t work. If they did, the diet industry would have put itself out of business by now.

The minute we embark on a slimming regime we think only of food. Planning the next leaf and cottage cheese meal becomes a 24-hour obsession. Looking forward with a passion to a low-fat, virtually flavour free yoghurt is what life is reduced to. No wonder Fern Britton rejected the indignity of it.

To drag a thin person out of the fat body in which he or she hides requires a wholly overhauled, revamped lifestyle, adhered to for the rest of life... or gastric banding.

Fern chose the latter. It’s just a pity she couldn’t have been more truthful about it. But since when did telly promise honesty? At least this little economy with facts didn’t involve premium rate phone lines.

Fern Britton is 50 and a celebrity with a high-profile, high-earning, massive audience broadcasting position. She would be an extremely rare breed of female telly person if she were not worrying almost all the time about the threat of some stick-thin, young pretty thing with legs up to her neck creeping up behind her to steal her job. They all do.

She has changed nothing of that familiar scenario by losing three or four stones quickly. She’ll never be 25 again, however much she weighs... none of us will.

In fact, by delivering an all-my-own-work story of natural, healthy transformation she may well have added another reason to look over her shoulder in nervousness.

Trustworthiness is key to her popularity and bubbly personality. She was trusted as the funny, happy, jolly comfy one of the TV sofa gang. Chubby, sexy, she was the trusted curvaceous woman next door. Wasn’t that how she became the cheery, self-effacing public face of Ryvita?

Still languishing on that who-cares rung of the Richter scale, her secret is nevertheless exposed. Confirmation, if any were needed – chewing on corrugated cardboard won’t turn anyone into Kate Moss before their next birthday. Or put another way, be sure your fibs will find you out.

And therein lies the little light relief this failed dieter needed to take home from a sorry story of surgically assisted weight watching. Can’t afford a gastric band and I can throw out the Ryvita... never could stand the stuff anyway. Chips, anyone?