BOOKS / In the lists

SOME writers go on producing what is essentially the same book in different guises: characters and locations may change, but the basic plot doesn't. Writers of diet bibles, lacking the scruples of romantic novelists, take this ruse to extremes and write the same book again and again, hardly re-vamping the title, to say nothing of the content. Three current bestsellers preach food combining, that odd creed which says you can't have a ham sandwich. Doctors' warnings that the theory is barmy - that it's how much you eat that counts, not the chemistry of the food mix - don't seem to cut much ice with the worriedly flabby public. The perennially popular Rosemary Conley is out in force too, trimming hips and thighs to beach standard. For a change, there's The Big Breakfast Diet Book - 'Big Breakfast' because it features Chris Evans and the early-morning crew demonstrating exercises like 'Bye Bye Big Bum', and because that's precisely what it tells you to eat. At last, a get-slim book that lets you have eggs and bacon and toast. Together. (But mind you poach the egg and grill the bacon and watch the butter.)