Editor-At-Large: My treatment for the blubbery classes? A 'fat pill' on the NHS

If you can buy a pill which stops you eating by blocking the messages from the brain that stimulate a craving for food, should it be available on the National Health Service? The drug, called Accomplia, only needs to be taken once a day. You could argue that if a quarter of the population is now classified as clinically obese, it's time to stop the debate and accept that it's cheaper to hand out drugs than treat heart disease, high blood pressure and all the joint problems that result from carrying around too much blubber. If fatties can survive for 140 days without eating, why do they carry on killing themselves? The answer reveals that obesity is a complex mental, as well as physical, condition.

The medical profession is clearly in a quandary over the issue. More than 650 doctors were polled recently over whether patients should be charged for "self-inflicted" medical conditions, from lung cancer to heart attacks, and the results, carried in Hospital Doctor magazine, showed that 40 per cent thought smokers should pay for heart bypass operations, and the same number agreed that alcoholics who drink should not be eligible for free liver transplants. A quarter of those taking part in the survey thought that obese patients should be denied free drugs to lose weight and should pay for any surgery brought about by their condition.

This seems callously judgemental. At the moment, the poor - who tend to be the people who smoke and drink too much and eat the wrong foods - are paying a disproportionate amount of their wages after income tax on a second tax, through high duties on their cigarettes and booze. They are the people who work the longest hours, and have the least time to cook. They also have the worst education, and end up with the fewest cooking skills. The cheapest food - ready meals - is the most processed and the least nutritious. The poor could eat really well if they had time to shop locally, buy more fresh food from small traders, spend time preparing it, and allow more time for cheaper cuts of meat to cook. But time is the one thing people working shifts on the minimum wage, travelling hours to and from work at unsociable hours, simply do not have.

It seems unfair, and perverse, to think that these people, having paid their national insurance contributions as well as income tax, should then be taxed again by a National Health Service, which is running out of cash. Why should those with the worst chance in life pay yet another tax on their medical requirements? Would it not be better to start educating all of us about health issues at primary school, reintroduce cooking lessons for children from the age of seven, and invest in school meals so that they eat one meal a day that is nutritious and well-balanced?

Of course, the Accomplia pill should be available on the NHS - it is a no-brainer. As the current cash crisis in the service spreads, a new insidious set of rules are being implemented by bankrupt health trusts, creating a discriminatory two-tier system. Last November, three primary care trusts in Suffolk decided that overweight patients would not get free hip and knee replacements unless they slimmed down. More trusts are probably secretly imposing the same criteria and hoping they don't end up in the press.

Obesity means you will be overlooked for good jobs, have a shorter life, and be socially stigmatised. But we are bombarded with images of food every moment of the day. It's no good expecting people to suddenly develop self-discipline; that would be totally unrealistic. Better to accept that no one can be completely responsible for their own wellbeing, and the re-education process has to start very young. In the short term, we should be handing out the pills and accepting that Accomplia presents a timely way of dealing with a crisis.

I can't forget my bad hair extensions day

Hair miles: the distance a footballer's wife travels in order to have her crowning glory serviced. In the cases of Victoria Beckham and Coleen McLoughlin, we're not talking about a taxi ride across town but a journey by plane to another country. Both WAGs have spent a small fortune having extensions glued on to their own locks in order to fool us into thinking that they've grown lavish flowing manes of hair. Coleen had already dashed back to Liverpool from Baden Baden to change the colour of her fake tresses and, not to be upstaged, Victoria flew on Ryanair (cost £340) from Germany to London and back to visit her hairdresser and have £1,500 worth of fake bits stuck in.

I once tried "improving" the Street-Porter tresses with dozens of extensions, in orange, blonde and black - I was reminded of this horror hairdo when I recorded a show with Terry Wogan last week and they played a clip of JSP and Bernard Manning circa 1992. My hair looked like a toilet brush! Shortly after that I went to Tobago for a holiday: in the sweltering heat all my fake bits stuck together and had to be picked out, one by one, a process that took the best part of a day - very unattractive.

Extensions only look any good for a couple of weeks. After a bit of partying they resemble a coconut mat stuck on your head - no wonder Posh and Coleen are willing to spend thousands on maintenance.

TV special: Elkan was the true inspiration for youth telly

I'm always being cited as the inventor of 'youth' telly, but the man who really did bring excitement and innovation to the small screen died last week. Elkan Allan was a genius - he created a ground-breaking show called 'Ready Steady Go!' for ITV in the early Sixties, presented by an unknown young mod with a trademark bob hairdo, Cathy McGowan (pictured below). As a schoolgirl, I managed to sneak into the audience - and it was the most exciting time of my life. The Who and The Rolling Stones, along with all the top groups of the day, performed in a huge studio, surrounded by the audience who were so cool that they spent hours working on their dance routines and what they were wearing. Elkan was my inspiration, and you can see his legacy in shows such as Chris Evans's 'TFI Friday'.

Designer fault: Drinking bottled water is a pure waste of money

In this sweltering weather, the accessory that makes me cringe is the mini-bottle of mineral water, clutched like a piece of designer jewellery. Bottled water is unnecessary, and environmentally hostile. We drink over two billion litres of mineral water a year, and the industry is growing at an exponential rate, at a time when regulators have imposed very strict standards on the quality of our tap water. If you really think your tap water tastes vile, why not buy filter jugs and fill up a couple of recycled plastic bottles you can carry around as designer accessories? There is no way flat mineral waters have the distinctive bouquets of fine wines. It's all about snobbery. With the exception of slightly fizzy water like Badoit, most mineral waters have no taste. Drinking them shows you are willing to pour money down the drain.