In an effort to try and reduce obesity, the world’s fastest growing health risk, doctors are now going to send porkers on cookery courses. Exercise classes. So they can eat properly and move more. That will cost about 500 quid a person but they reckon the long-term gain in reduction of diabetes will more than compensate. Though initially you need to cough up (no pun)… 500 quid… times every fat person up north… add in the few down here… Wales and Scotland… well, its a few billion quid. Everything the NHS does costs a few billion quid by the time the administrators have had their kick-backs from the diet and exercise companies involved. Where really, all you need is four words, spoken preferably over the top of a pair of reading glasses, with due gravitas and sincerity; “eat less, move more” and the world would be fine again.

Which was somewhat contrary to my experience at the cinema last night. We went to see Detroit. Kathy Bigelow’s bio-pic of the terrible race riots in the eponymous city in 1967, focussing on one specific event during that time of insanity in which three black guys were basically, cold-bloodedly murdered by the police and half a dozen others assaulted and beaten. Its not exactly a ‘feel-good’ movie. But looked interesting. And was. Though not as interesting as it was laborious. Not just overly long but long and slow. One of those films that you endure for the sake of learning things rather than enjoy for its own sake.

The tickets were free! Lila’s mum gets free tickets every week if she walks sufficient ‘steps’ for her health insurance to love her. And give her a pair of cinema tickets that she can’t use because she has a baby. That’d be Lila then. So we went in her place. And when you pick them up there’s a popcorn machine. A hot-dog thing. Fizzy, sugary drinks. Nachos. Which they drown in bright yellow fat and call it ‘cheese’ then throw on some jalapinos (one of yer 5-a-day, obvs). You could ask for a salad. But they’d look puzzled and offer you ice-cream instead. You could ask for carrot batons with humous, but they wouldn’t know what the fuck you were talking about. No, sorry sir, we only sell fat and sugar and only in humungous quantities. To justify the outrageous price we’re going to charge you.

I ordered a popcorn, medium, sweet. I only do sweet. Mel almost prefers salt but I have trouble picking the sweet ones out in the dark so she concedes to avoid the spitting out that may otherwise follow. “Would you like to go large for just 30p extra???” Holy shit, I thought, I’m living ‘Supersize Me’. I’m being upgraded.

Don’t you know that the country is suffering unprecedented obesity? Isn’t this kind of crass commercialism the very reason? Because food, especially popcorn, costs virtually nothing, so you pile it on to justify increasing your take-per-seat? In some cases very large seats. Its destructive to society and harmful to individuals and you should be ashamed of yourself and your rotten company.

That’s what I should have said. Instead I opted for, ‘yeah, why not, I’ll have the large, thanks’.

Fortunately I have the metabolism of a mosquito so its no biggy. Oh, and I’m a pig, so that was 30p well spent. Now I just have to live with the guilt.

Happy Friday

A xxxx