I’m due to go on holiday soon but am worried about my “beach body”. I don’t seem to have one. Every magazine tells me I need one and that, in ten easy steps, I can get one, but I’m not sure I want to. What does beach body mean, anyway? Michael Winner spends a lot of time on beaches and he has a body. Should we be aiming for that? Or Simon Cowell’s? I’m confused.

Oh, I see! They’re talking about Kelly Brook, who has, apparently, been voted “the Best Bikini Body Ever” (you can interchange “beach” and “bikini”; it seems to mean the same thing).

And all of us can become “summer sizzlers” simply by cutting out wheat, dairy, protein, carbohydrates, vegetables, nuts, fruit, and eating only wet kitchen roll and laxatives for three months while touching our toes 100,000 times a day.

Mmm, sounds good. But why bother? Nobody who frequents beaches in the real world looks remotely like Kelly Brook anyway. On Real Beach, everyone looks the same: like rows of dry sows with burnt legs lying on Primark beach towels.

Dieting for summer holidays is totally unnecessary. Because we all know a sophisticated denial process occurs in the brain whenever we approach sand and water. You know – the delusion that a sarong is a miracle garment which you merely tie around your wobbly midriff to gain the effect of full body liposuction. The delusion that it’s normal to stand in a supermarket queue naked save for a thong and two small triangles perched on the nipples. The male delusion that sitting at a restaurant table in tiny trunks with your legs wide apart won’t remotely put other diners off their meat and two veg.

Anyway, there’s a new type of body that looks much more interesting. It’s called the “wine-glass figure” and is acquired by ladies who like to get legless on alcohol. I can do that!

Oh. On closer inspection, I see that it’s not actually desirable to have a wine-glass figure (not to be confused with the hourglass, which is “womanly”). It is typified by a larger upper body and a thinner lower half, because the booze calories accumulate as fat around the middle, like men’s beer bellies. So we begin to look like overfed battery hens. Possible examples might include Charlotte Church, Britney Spears and Jade Goody.

Could I just say at this juncture, what a load of bollocks? In times of crisis when I have lived on what I fondly call “the lager diet”, the weight has dropped off. It was when I started eating again that my waist thickened into a fair impression of Mike Tyson’s neck. It may not be healthy, folks, but it’s true.

Yes, I must go now to begin work on my article, How to Get Your Perfect Ale Body. Expect to read it in all women’s magazines, when hell freezes over.

bargainhunter@thetimes.co.uk

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