PLATELL'S PEOPLE: Obesity a sickness? No, it's just plain greed

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A few years ago, after an hour working out in the gym, I headed off for my favourite treat. Standing in line for my double-helping bacon sandwich oozing with melted butter and brown sauce, I felt a tap on my shoulder.

It was Ronnie, one of the trainers at my gym. He said: ‘Before you stuff that in your mouth, look at the size of the backsides of people ahead of you in that queue.’

Cruel, perhaps, but honest. Because as a personal trainer he knows the basic fact about fatties.

Experts all talk about an ‘obesity’ epidemic as if people who fill their faces suffer from some illness over which they have no control

They’re overweight because they eat too much and exercise too little.

Yet experts all talk about an ‘obesity’ epidemic as if people who fill their faces suffer from some illness over which they have no control. And now our nanny state is stepping in with its latest ‘cure’.

Yesterday, we learned it is determined to force food manufacturers to make burgers and pizza portions smaller, reduce the size of crisp packets and lower the fat and sugar content of unhealthy foods.

What infantilising nonsense. It’s going to put up the cost of food for all of us as manufacturers comply. And it’s going to do nothing to stop people guzzling. It’s greed that makes you fat. Not ignorance about the dangers of junk food.

Like all normal-sized people, I have to work hard to stay trim. Everyone knows endless burgers and crisps, washed down with litres of fizzy drink, are bad for you. But fatties lack the willpower to stop eating. 

Reduce the burger size and the Billy Bunters after instant gratification will just order two, with extra chips.

We are among the lardiest in Europe. Two-thirds of adults and one-third of 11-year-olds are overweight, leading to heart attacks, strokes, cancer and diabetes.

But this initiative suggests the fatties waddling about our streets are the Government’s fault — they’re all victims, as though those giant sausage rolls automatically fly off the hot plate and into their open mouths. 

Like all normal-sized people, I have to work hard to stay trim. Everyone knows endless burgers and crisps, washed down with litres of fizzy drink, are bad for you

Or they’re obese because they’re poor, and everyone else is to blame for cramming them full of junk food and takeaways.

Until we hold families and individuals, parents and children, accountable, waistlines will continue to strain at their belts. We don’t need more laws to ram home the harsh truth about gluttony — just common sense and strength of character.

A member of the congregation at Diana’s funeral service in Westminster Abbey says that the Queen showed her disapproval of Earl Spencer’s vitriolic speech by not applauding. What nonsense. 

The Queen doesn’t have to be the head of the Church of England to know it’s incredibly bad form to clap in church.

The guilt that haunts Camilla

After weeks of poignant memories leading up to the 20th anniversary of Diana’s death, a poll showed two-thirds of Britons do not want Camilla to be Queen.

That’s before two more documentaries: Diana: The Day Britain Cried on ITV and Diana, 7 Days on BBC.

Prince William reveals he and Harry only managed the walk behind her coffin because ‘it felt she was almost walking along beside us’. Camilla must feel a bit that way, still haunted by the woman whose marriage she destroyed.

What’s the betting these two programmes set back the Duchess’s ambitions by another two decades? 

The new series of Channel 4’s Child Genius has been marked by tears, tantrums, bitching and accusations of cheating . . . and that’s just the parents. 

These won’t be so much helicopter mums and dads, hovering protectively over their offspring, but Hoover parents — sucking the very childhood out of them. 

Top Gun is now top tum 

Sad to see Tom Cruise, who prides himself on doing his own stunts, has broken two bones leaping from a roof in his next Mission: Impossible movie.

Sad to see Tom Cruise, who prides himself on doing his own stunts, has broken two bones leaping from a roof in his next Mission: Impossible movie

But how hilarious those pictures of him performing the stunt were, his flabby cheeks puffed out in exertion (top).

It must truly be mission impossible for technicians who do body-retouching on the film to turn this ageing Top Gun midget back into a superhero.

Before it became the anthem for survivors of the Manchester Arena bombing, Don’t Look Back In Anger was a 1995 hit for Oasis. 

Now Noel Gallagher is to perform it at the Arena’s re-opening next month — without brother Liam. What a shame the feuding pair can’t practise what they preach.

I've put a ‘claws’ clause in my will for my cat Ted. Whoever offers him a loving home gets a hefty sum.

Opportunists need not apply, only those who’ll cherish him — because the money increases for every year he lives.

There's no place to hide for Heidi

Promoting her latest lingerie collection, Heidi Klum says: ‘Sexy is about keeping it simple and letting your natural beauty show.’ 

That explains why, even at 44, her inhibitions aren’t all she’s shedding. 

Promoting her latest lingerie collection, Heidi Klum says: ‘Sexy is about keeping it simple and letting your natural beauty show'

Like a Duracell bunny, Anne Robinson just keeps on going. Presenting a dating show at 72, she reveals she’s looking for Mr Right on Tinder. He has to be rich, successful and at least a decade younger than her.

Good for our Anne! Money and glamour — those are her weakest links.

Well done David Beckham after slaving ‘in secret’ for six days to build a Lego Disney Princess Castle for daughter Harper. 

He then posted his achievement to his 39 million Instagram fans. 

It would be even more fun if, like most dads, Becks had toiled for his child without boasting about it to the whole world. 

The PC brigade is upset by The Archers storyline in which Oxford student Phoebe has a fling with a promiscuous Latvian fruit picker. 

She has to have tests for pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases. If I were Latvian, I’d be offended, too. 

There are plenty of Oxbridge men she could have picked up an STD from — during Freshers’ week. 

No wonder Daniel Craig was reluctant to step back into his role as James Bond, despite a £100 million pay packet.

No wonder Daniel Craig was reluctant to step back into his role as James Bond, despite a £100 million pay packet

It’s been more than a decade since the 49-year-old squeezed his once magnificent body into those blue budgie smugglers in Casino Royale. 

Given the pictures of him recently, he’ll need a torso toner — man speak for high-waisted Spanx — to cut it in his tux. 

Shocking betrayal in our care homes

Sheila Morris is an 84-year-old stricken with Parkinson’s disease. When she needed round-the-clock care, her family decided she would have to go into a £5,000-a-month nursing home.

But her worried son Clive installed a spy camera in her room. What he discovered was shocking.

He alleges she was violently sick one night and left unattended for six hours. He claims she was given ‘dangerous’ food and suffered eight urinary-tract infections.

This week’s Mail Investigations Unit revelations of endemic abuse, with four in ten care homes failing inspections, are devastating for those of us with parents in care.

The day we took Mum into a care home — packing her precious mementoes, including pictures of her parents, children and grandchildren, none of whom she could remember due to Alzheimer’s — was one of the most heartbreaking of my life. Sadly, it was the only option.

But when our loved ones are treated badly, we children feel utterly powerless and betrayed.