Exorcise the exercise

The daily struggle with the belt buckle is enough to remind the Diary of the need to lose weight after the Christmas festivities, but when a colleague left a keep-fit DVD on the Diary desk, the feeling of a line crossed was unavoidable.

However, as usual, all was not as it seemed. It was not a gift from concerned colleagues who’d noticed the Diary struggling up the stairs of a morning, but a promotional item from new management company Drugstore.

The Drugstore Problem Solver High Fat Burner 2005 comes with a testimonial proclamation that: “I went from a fat bastard to a bastard in just six weeks” and is intended as an introduction to the company. Now the Diary isn’t normally one for social pleasantries, but surely a good first impression is not entirely compatible with sweating through skin-tight spandex.

Drugstore claims to solve “big fat problems”. Well the Diary has one: there seems to be no getting rid of the flashbacks of a near-naked marketing director doing aerobics. Any help solving that one would be gratefully received.