Winning Ways?

The most entertaining diet book to be published in ... ooh, days, Michael Winner’s ‘Fat Pig Diet’ (JR Books, £12.99) is as curiously enthralling as the great man himself: largely satirical, but laden with huge dollops of atypical humble pie.

Following a near-death experience in 2007 when he contracted the extremely rare Vibrio Vulnificus illness after eating a suspect oyster in Barbados, the infamously obnoxious food critic/film director/producer has shed three and a half stone by eating and drinking everything he loves but at a fraction of his regular, former portion size. Yes, it’s a simple formula. No, it shouldn’t take 231 pages to explain. But this book is more for those who fetishise food (and slurp up Winner’s trademark pompous penchant for self-aggrandisement) than anybody trying to cut down on intake.

The Diet Diary (which consumes the majority of the book) reads like it was written by the bastard child of Samuel Pepys and Bridget Jones: “Tuesday 6th June. Morning weight: 82.8kg. Great dinner! 100g of Beluga caviar, three lightly boiled eggs. I ate it with a knife and fork! Fantastic! I went mad and had a large glass of Vieux Chateau Certan Pomerol...” etc. And if the conspicuous consumption of ‘luxury’ produce doesn’t make you sick, the ‘sleb namedropping, gratuitous globetrotting and total, utter snobbery will. But don’t panic, dear! It’s only another diet book.