Fat Larry’s Banned.

No, this isn’t about the Eighties group Fat Larry’s Band that created the quite awful and uber-cheesy ‘Zoom’, a one hit wonder if ever there was one. (Fat Larry was the singing drummer!) It’s about a Creative Director who decided that to be in the best shape to make his company and his creative dreams come true, he had to drop The Gut. And about 45 pounds, 20 kilos or 3 stone in old money. No more Fat Larry, or rather Fat Laurence.

I don’t quite know how the weight crept on. Beer was surely a culprit. Three years ago I was getting heavier, but the pictures show a guy in basically reasonable shape. I used to lift weights and every gym bunny knows that when you lift weights you shed fat. But a back injury slowed me down, and even my regular morning aerobic sessions on the stairclimbers and crosstrainers – and the spin classes – began to fade out of my life.

One of the first ways you know you’re overweight is that everyone else starts looking really thin.

I couldn’t watch Match Of The Day. Gary Lineker is so freaking rudely thin. And so are all the other presenters. How? What do they do? What are they on? Do you have to have some sort of nuclear metabolism to be a football presenter? Even Adrian Chiles is thin. And watching the Joseph Technicolor Dreamcoat reality show, it made me bizarrely upset that Andrew Lloyd Weber is thin. Michael Winner is thin. My ex-wife is thin. My kids are thin. Arrrrgghhh. It’s crap being a fattie in a thinnie world.

Well at last I had to admit I was carrying a big gut and too much fat. Denial is not a river in Africa.

I’d catch The Gut in the mirror and wonder at it’s sheer sphericalness, almost like I’d swallowed one of the Swiss balls in the gym.

Enter Graham, personal trainer. He’s a bundle of Kiwi energy, loud and proud and with the kind of enthusiasm I thought only existed in American infommercials. I can’t bear it I changed next to him in the gym for four years, and never had the guts (although I had the gut) to ask for his help.

Fifteen or so sessions in, spurred on by his tangible life force and skilled encouragement, and I’m already halfway there. The fabulous foothills of 200 (pounds, not kilos!) approach, and then that’s when I start to look thin. Lineker thinness won’t be until 190, and the Holy Grail is 180. My hero Roger Federer – how can anyone be that good and that sportsmanlike and that nice? – is 180. (OK, I'll only be 0.00005% as good at tennis as him, but it'll feel better!)

So publically, thank you Graham. You’ve been a trainer, a shrink (in your words, My Dr Phil), and already a friend. And when you change your reality, you suddenly feel more creative, too. Fantastic.

And I wish I’d asked you four years earlier. From now on, Fat Larry’s banned.