The Fat Of The Land

‘YESTERDAY a bathing Michelle McManus was single-handedly responsible for the rise in the level of the world’s oceans and the flooding of large parts of Holland and the Norfolk coast.

What Fern’s neighbour saw

But today Michelle is no longer making tidal waves in being seen in a swimsuit – she is now standing up for womanhood.

And, in a U-turn that would make Tony Blair blanch, the Sun is proud of her.

‘Michelle might be massive,’ writes the paper, ‘but, as yesterday’s pictures showed, she’s mightily proud of her body.

‘But somehow Michelle, who is a very welcome antidote to the airbrushed anorexics we are used to seeing, still looked great.’

Of course, she did not look great. She looked huge, or massive as the Sun puts it. Michelle, now on first terms with the paper, looked enormous and very overweight.

And given the welter of comment and anti-comment written about her girth, she is less an antidote to the obsession with thinness and more of a freak, an oddity to be pored over and debated.

But things are set to change. The big-of-bone are on the march and the stick-thin rakes had best walk briskly for their lives.

Staying with the Sun, we learn that there is something yet bigger than the Pop Idol winner, and her name is Fern Britton.

The Sun yesterday tuned into This Morning, the show Britton (since she’s fat and therefore deemed to be friendly and unthreatening, let’s call her Fern) presents .

During the broadcast, Fern regaled the watching bed-bound with a tale of how, when employed in the duty of washing her child, she went to close a window and inadvertently flashed her neighbour.

‘She saw me and waved. You have never seen someone move so fast behind a curtain,’ says Fern.

Given Fern’s size, we imagine that we have seen people move quicker – and that might include Phil Jupitus, the larger-than-life comedian who has vowed to lose weight.

From Fern’s breasts, it’s a short grope to Phil’s and the news in the Express that he is now wearing a jacket he couldn’t have fitted into just six weeks ago.

Way to go, Phil! And what’s more, Phil says he is off carbohydrates right now, and only has fruit for breakfast, which he claims gives him so much energy.

That’ll be the carbohydrates in the fruit, then…’

Posted: 27th, April 2004 | In: Tabloids Comment | TrackBack | Permalink