It doesn't take a genius to know that the world has gone stark-staring mad. I'm not talking about the build-up to Armageddon currently playing out in a country that many of us couldn't spike on a map. I'm on about dieting.
It is a national obsession. 12.8 million of us are on a diet at any given moment, according to a 2000 Gallup poll. And - here's the stark-staring bit - 99 per cent of those who do lose weight on a diet simply shovel it back on as soon as they take their eye off the scales. We spend, annually, around £3 billion on fast food, £3.6bn on chocolate and £2bn on diet products. Just imagine the British Isles with a tube in its gob hosing in the calories, and another in its tush, Hoovering out the excess. The resulting seesaw leaves the national psyche serially miserable, with a quarter of the adult population in a state of self-loathing, mirror-hating gloom.
And who's to blame? Posh Spice, stupid! The more addicted we become to celebrity culture, the thinner the celebrities become. I suspect they'll be able to get two bums on one seat at the Oscars in a fortnight's time. Some of these stars are virtually see-through. I was captivated by Courteney Cox-Arquette's bottom on Friends the other night. It is no more! It has ceased to be! Quite how the poor dear sits down is beyond me, and it's hideously possible that she'll get stuck in a loo seat one day - which is pretty mortifying, even if you do make $1m per episode. As most of us get older, our butts head south, but hers just went the whole hog and blew town. A fiver to anyone who spots it on the loose in Central Park, hob-nobbing with Jennifer Aniston's original nose.
Aniston herself pointed up the craziness of our dieting addiction recently. Seemingly without irony, she admitted idolising actresses as a child. 'Their hair, their clothes, their make-up were perfect,' she says. 'Looking back, I realise it wasn't a good thing. I was wanting to become this unattainable person.' The upshot, she now confesses, was an eating disorder that wrecked her health. 'I started taking vitamins and exercising and went too far. You get in that Zone diet thing and you kind of get addicted to that.' No shit, Rach.
Mere mortals, seeing the absence of bums and hips and tums on the box, kill themselves to keep up - chiefly by following the supposed diet regime of the latest old bint to turn up at a premiere in a couple of Kleenex and some tit-tape. So, to save you the effort of trawling the press, I have collated the more avant garde methods for your delight. Why not cut this out and pin it to your fridge door?
The Paltrow diet
According to popular legend, and my Heat magazine, Gwyneth keeps her string-bean body in check by dining quite, quite, naked. Clearly, this is something she undertakes in private, allowing the sight of her post-prandial abdomen to put her off the left-over tiramisu knocking around in the fridge. I like to think she makes the most of the experience, hotting up her Pot Noodle suppers with a blazing log fire, a shag-pile rug and Coldplay tootling away on her Mini-Discman.
The Zeta-Jones diet
Simply encourage your husband to deliver all meals to you by shoving a spoon down your throat. Have a friend take pictures. Be so damaged, devastated and distressed by the photos that you never want to eat again.
Alternatively, you could just up sticks and head for Hollywood. Its atmosphere clearly constitutes the best diet in the world. As CZJ put it: 'It is all too easy for the film industry to conclude that an actress is past her best.' If that doesn't keep you off the Ben and Jerry's nothing will.
The Winslet diet
It's tricky to exploit the air-brushing technique in real time (though I'm sure something effective could be fashioned using mirrors). The Winslet has similarities with the Food Critic's Diet, which requires that you never publish photographs of yourself shot after 1974. Bear in mind that both diets are only really useful to those engaged in internet romance.
The celebrity mother plan
Have your baby by C-section at an expensive private London hospital, but do it a month early to preclude excessive weight gain. Book in for simultaneous tummy tuck. In fact, have your surgeon remove superfluous organs (second kidney, appendix, spare ribs etc). Tell everyone it was the breast-feeding that did it.
The supermodel diet
Smoke fags. Do smack. Vomit in loo after each meal.
The Beverly Hills diet
As above, but don't smoke or do smack.
The F-plan diet
As in F-this, I'm going down the chippie. Also known as the Kelly Osbourne diet.
