It's been a funny old week in the war on obesity. First we have the Oscars where Nicole Kidman looks like a pencil and all the other film stars' looks so lean and lithe they must have starved themselves for weeks to get into their posh dresses. Then we have the details of the fat zones of Britain, the towns where living off the fat of the land no longer applies because the fat of the land are so busy living off junk food - and getting fatter all the time. There are calls to ban sweets at the checkout and McDonald's announce that in the States, for starters, they are to discontinue their `super size' meals in an effort to be seen to be
well, making an effort. Diet with Atkins and it now makes you depressed, they say, though the only thing that makes dieters depressed is, I suggest, being too fat. Meanwhile, there are those who think chicken only comes in nuggets and everywhere you look people are eating in the streets. When I was young, eating in the street was frowned upon. The only thing you dared have was an ice cream cone. Now people eat burgers, sandwiches, cakes, pasties, pizza, even Chinese takeaways out of the cartons. Fast food or things `t'go' are part of our culture and mealtimes as a social occasion are somehow off the agenda. Sunday lunch will be gone soon too because Sundays are no longer special. Cooking doesn't really mean cooking but heating something up in the microwave. And though the television chefs are all the rage, I'll bet only a fraction of viewers actually ever try to make anything they see. It's not that they don't want to. It's that they don't know how to. Domestic science classes or home economics, or whatever the buzzword is now, are no longer a regular part of the school curriculum. Our memories of aprons and wicker baskets and taking home scones and flans with a tea towel over the top to keep them warm for tea are long gone. The big problem is that the parents now accused of feeding their children on unhealthy foods and snacks have never been taught about nutrition, protein, the importance of fruit and vegetables and so on. A little boy I met last week had never seen a dried apricot or a raisin before, let alone tasted one. And neither had his mother. I saw a report this week that said children in state nurseries were to be offered free fruit or milk instead of just free milk under the latest Welfare Food Scheme. Not fruit and milk which would have been of real benefit, but fruit OR milk. According to health secretary John Reid "The best way of tackling obesity is through encouraging a healthy diet at an early age." He'd better enlist the help of the Education secretary first! Calling for a blanket ban Fiona Dunlop is the newly appointed, though strangely named, Tobacco Control Manager for the North-East. Her post is funded by the Department of Health and though she says she is not looking for a blanket ban on smoking in public places in the region, why not? Hers is an important health role and it's to be hoped she doesn't adopt a softly softly approach and let the smokers hold sway. With No Smoking Day coming up next week and news that more and more countries are taking a hard line on smokers - Italy has banned smoking on all Eurostar trains and the controversial ban in Ireland's public places, and public houses, is but three weeks away - it would be wrong not to keep up the pressure. Of course, this little item means that in the next few days I will receive my usual crop of hate mail from smokers who claim they are being victimised unfairly. But with shopping in the MetroCentre now noticeably more pleasant, I couldn't be more pleased at their discomfort. If the health reasons and the cost aren't enough to make the smokers give up then perhaps we should just tell them we can smell a smoker at 50 paces - and it's just not nice. Really public interest? It is not even a year since Graham Coutts murdered Jane Longhurst, his girlfriend's best friend, and kept her body in a storage unit for five weeks until he removed it and burned it in a wood. The other night a television documentary told the whole, gruesome story - and showed it too, including all the CCTV footage of the murderer even cleaning up the floor in the storage building when fluids from his victim seeped out of the box she was held in. We were allowed to see the police interviews with Coutts in which he broke down. We were shown the flat above his own where he is believed to have put Jane Longhurst before he transferred her to the box and we were told it was possible he had sex with Jane after she was dead. Why did anyone think it was in the public interest to make a programme like this? ********** Isn't it great that the Coca-Cola legend has been watered down this week with news that their smart new bottled water has come out of the taps in Sidcup and been dressed up in designer packaging to cost a packet? Actually, I bought some of that Dasani water the other week - yes, the blue bottles did look nice but the introductory price was what really sold it to me - and quickly sussed that `pure still water' was simply a rip-off. What's the betting now that Dasani disappears as quickly down the plughole as it came out of the taps. In any case, didn't they use our tap water to fill their tank when they staged that launch stunt in early February at the Centre for Life? ********** I was pleased to see that my favourite film won at The Oscars the other evening. No, not LOTR:TROTK but Finding Nemo, the most heartwarming film of the year which I notice came out on video and DVD just last week. I don't think I'll ever succumb to the excitement of the Lord of the Rings saga - but a good animated film like Nemo or Shrek can work magic, no matter how old you are. ********** I don't know how old 'old' is supposed to be, but 60 doesn't seem to me to be any age at all. So I wonder what explorer Sir Ranulph Fiennes was thinking this week as he was named Oldie of the Year just shy of his 60th birthday. And how insensitive of the award-givers to put him so firmly in the spotlight just a week or so after the death from cancer of his beloved wife Ginny. It just shows you can run rings around the world - as he did so recently - but you still can't escape the wagging finger that reminds you that 'at your age' you should somehow know better! ********** It is very nice that a fund has been launched to raise £73,000 for a statue of the late Bob Stokoe who meant so much to both Newcastle and Sunderland football clubs. But isn't it a shame that we had to wait until he'd died to think about the tribute? It is 31 years since he led Sunderland to victory in the FA Cup. I'm sure he would have been thrilled if someone had suggested a statue of him in his lifetime. ********** Good to see that Penny Plain, the one-time gift shop launched in the early 70s in Newcastle, is set to go from strength to strength. I well remember the excitement - and the orders - that flowed after a young Diana, then a Princess in waiting, wore a certain sheep sweater. Penny Plain was then well known for its range of clever sweater designs. Overnight, that little black sheep put Penny Plain on the national map. ********** If ever there was a candidate for smile of the year it would have to go to Steve Gibson, the ebullient young chairman of Middlesbrough football club. His happiness on Sunday when his team hoisted him on their shoulders as they claimed the Carling Cup was that of a little boy given the biggest and best train set in the world. Good for him! | 
