If you ask me... January is the cruellest month for a lady and her self-esteem

So, starving yourself and treating food as an evil to be eliminated is the key to lifelong happiness, is it? My wrongedy wrong wrong body is sceptical

24th May 1933: Ruby Hillary, putting her health and beauty class through their slimming exercises at Bounds Green School, London. (Getty Images)

If you ask me, January, with its endless onslaught of weight-loss tips and diets, is the cruellest month for a lady and her self-esteem, making her more aware than ever that her body is all hopeless and wrong, and I think we all know what it is like, waking up every morning with a body that is hopeless and wrong, and having to drag it everywhere with you.

I dragged my wrong body, which is so wrong it is technically known as “wrongedy wrong wrong”, around Asda just this morning, and it was no fun whatsoever. My wrongedy wrong wrong body could barely keep up and just mooched, flabbily. I wanted to punch it, and would have if it hadn’t wept and railed and begged for pity. “Don’t hate me. Hate the forces that compel you to hate me,” it cried, as if that ever does any good, or makes you a size 6 with the sort of legs that go straight up to the armpits (although not literally, as that would be hideous).

Over the years, I have certainly tried to ditch this wrongedy wrong wrong body of mine. I have prayed to our Lord. “Oh, Lord, what shall I do with these thighs so unlike Elle Macpherson’s and so much more like hefty tree trunks?” And our Lord said: “Child, she who believeth in me shall have thighs of everlasting slenderness and a hauteur of everlasting willowyness, but not today as I musteth see the doctor about my athlete’s foot.”

I have tried offloading my wrong body on to someone else. I once tried to abandon it on Terry Wogan’s doorstep, but he raced out with his 12-bore walking stick and chased me off his property, shouting: “Be off, begorrah, and do not bother myself or Lady Helen ever again!” I tried sending it to Arlene Phillips, but she sent it back that very afternoon, with a rather harsh note – “This is not a body I want or will ever want” – and, as for Woody Allen, although I was hopeful, he closed the door in my wrongedy wrong wrong body’s face and said: “Not today, thank you.” I’ll say one thing for Woody: he is always polite.

And so I’m stuck, I think, with this wrong body that is, technically, wrongedy wrong wrong and refuses to go on the latest fad diet, the 5:2 Fasting Diet. “So,” it has said, “starving yourself and treating food as an evil to be eliminated is the key to lifelong happiness, is it? It’s not just bollocks and tantamount to self-abuse?”

But what does my body know, really, considering it’s been plain wrong, if not plain wrongedy wrong wrong, since the year dot? Honestly. What a dolt.