Carb Trouble

‘VICTIMS are everywhere.

Gail Porter (ACTUAL SIZE)

Claire Sweeney is a victim. Our Claire is a victim of the intolerable strain put on high profile, talented women who want it all. And by celebrity osmosis, it’s affected Claire, too.

She, like you, read the work of the shadowy Dr Atkins, became indoctrinated in his cult of slim thighs and pert buttocks and has suffered because of it.

Talking to the Mail through gritted teeth, Sweeney tells all. ‘I didn’t miss carbs that much,’ she says. ‘I think the hardest thing to give up was tea or coffee.’

For those over a certain age, carbs is not Sweeney’s pet cat or the character she used to play in Brookside but a shortened, gym-wise word for carbohydrates, those evil things that Dr Atkins wants to stamp out with a heavy metal boot.

Tea and coffee are drinks.

And there’s more. ‘After a short time on the diet, I suddenly collapsed. My temperature soared and I couldn’t stop shaking. I was bed-ridden and the doctor came to see me. I was diagnosed as having a kidney infection.’

That’s pretty tame stuff, and Gail Porter in the Mirror scoffs at Sweeney pathetic infection and throws her own anorexia into the hat.

Whereas celebs used to verbally joust over who came from the most deprived family and do battle with tales of breathtaking poverty, today’s breed compare illnesses or addictions.

So we hear Porter talk about her 10-year ‘fight’ with the wasting illness. We learn that Gail’s weight once dipped to 6st 7lbs, a low amount – but since she was only aged 10 at the time and no more than 3ft high, not really that bad.

And at the end of Gail’s confessional we also learn that Mel C, the former Sporty Spice Girl, has admitted to surviving on fruit and veg and exercising excessively.

‘I’m never going back there again,’ says she.

Not for all the tea in China – or for all the carbs in a Claire Sweeney…’

Posted: 9th, September 2003 | In: Tabloids Comment | TrackBack | Permalink