Fat

by Rob Grant

  Grenville sucked it up. As politely as he could, and in words even a plastic blonde might understand, he explained the situation. The woman was surprised. She'd been under the impression they'd all partaken of the buffet in the VIP tent. They'd missed lunch, she explained, but dinner would be served at six, and she led them to a drinking fountain that wasn't working.

  Dinner? Six o'clock? Six o'clock was not dinner. It was high tea. Was this to be the regime Grenville had subscribed to? Was everyone in the camp expected to acquire the eating habits of an octogenarian?

  Barbie tried to lead them upstairs for induction, but the broken drinking fountain proved to be her Arnhem, and she actually had to be rescued by Grenville and the rugby player from a choking headlock a has-been soap star superbitch was trying to throttle her with.

  After that, they did get their water, at least, and a couple of plates of dried-up crudites, salvaged, no doubt, from the VIP reception, whose attendees had had the good sense to give them a wide berth.

  They proceeded, then, to induction. Grenville was allocated his Personal Fitness Manager, who was also made entirely of plastic. He endured, once again, all the usual measurings and the weighings and the blood pressure armband. But there were other, more rigorous assessments, too. He had to give a blood sample and a urine sample and, oddly, a DNA swab. Couldn't they get your DNA from your blood or even your piss? His lung capacity was measured. He was given an electrocardiogram. He was put through his paces on a variety of machines, one of which, a sort of ski slash step machine, which simulated, for some reason, walking up stairs, only backwards, he couldn't work at all. This had thrown the android, who had to put something in the box on her form, but no matter how much she cajoled him, Grenville couldn't even complete a step. Either he was altogether too heavy for it, or the requisite muscles had never developed in his legs. In the end, rather than prolong the torture, she agreed, with ridiculous reluctance, to fill in the box with a question mark, but she was less than happy about it.

  He rowed, he cycled, he jogged, all on simulators, and all still in his chef's jacket. And this, mind you, was the superstar VIP treatment. At the end of it, he was awarded with a print-out of his new exercise regime, a personalised diet chart and his shiny new Well Farm credits card.

  Finally, he was reunited with his happy troop of tubby failures, and they were handed over to a 'Residential Consultant', who had clearly been squeezed out of the same nozzle as the other two Well Farm employees, who checked them all off on his clipboard and led them to their accommodations.

  And, of course, they were expected to walk. And, of course, their guide set off like the starting gun had been fired at the Camptown Races, and he had to win this one or die. Were they under instructions to force march their charges at blistering speeds, these plastic parodies of people? Were they under the impression they were leading a bunch of seven year olds who were just bursting to run everywhere? It had been a long, hard, gruelling day, and there were mutinous -- and even murderous -- mutterings. Mercifully for the guide, their residences were not too far away.

  And as soon as Grenville stepped through the door, he wished he was back in his detention cell in Hornsey Police Station.

  What looked like a reasonably comfortable, if sparsely furnished, communal living area in the brochure was, in fact, more like an army barracks after a mortar attack. It was depressing beyond belief. Two tiny sofas, two Spartan tables and a scattering of very uncomfortable-looking chairs were arranged randomly around, and that was it.

  Grenville approached their guide. 'Have we been robbed?'

  'Sorry?'

  'Has some bastard come in here and nicked all our furniture?'

  The guide looked puzzled and consulted his clipboard. 'No.' He shook his head. 'No, I think this is the full checklist.'

  'This is the full checklist, is it?'

  The guide consulted his clipboard again. 'Yes, sir, it's the full checklist.'

  'How many people are supposed to live in this billet?'

  'Eight.'

  'There are only six chairs.'

  'Two of them are sofas.'

  'They might be sofas for Kate Moss. Can you imagine two of us lot squeezed into one of them? Are we trying to get into the Guinness Book of Records or something? My armchair at home is bigger than both those sofas put together.'

  The guide smiled brightly. 'Well, we don't plan to have you doing a lot of sitting. We're not here to turn you into couch potatoes, are we?'

  The rugby player emerged from the dormitory. 'Have you seen the bloody beds? You couldn't fit my bloody dick on one of those.'

  The guide held up his hands and appealed for calm. Any complaints or problems they might encounter could be dealt with in the morning, once the induction process was over for everybody. Then he read out the list of the celebrities who were billeted to this particular hovel.

  'Excuse me.' Grenville approached the guide again. 'Are you saying this is a mixed-sex dormitory?'

  The guide again consulted his clipboard. 'Yes. Yes it is. They all are.'

  There were howls of protest from the women inmates. Grenville held up his hand. 'Ladies, I'll deal with this, calmly and politely.' He turned to the guide. 'Are you out of your fucking tree, you brain-dead little turd?'

  'Now, there's no need for that kind of--'

  'There's every need for that kind of. You are going to reallocate the rooms, right now, my friend, this very instant, and you are going to put the women in one hovel, and the men in another.'

  'I'm afraid I can't do that.'

  'You can't do that? Why would that be? Because you're too simple-minded? Because such a demanding endeavour as crossing out a couple of names on your clipboard and replacing them with other names is so far beyond your capabilities, it might cause your pond-life brain to explode with exertion?'

  'I don't know what you're getting so upset about. I mean, they do it in Big Brother, don't they? Don't you want to share a bedroom with a few lovely ladies?' He wriggled his eyebrows suggestively. 'You know, sex is one of the best exercises--' But he never finished the sentence, on account of Grenville's face being pressed so dangerously close to his own, they were on the verge of kissing.

  'Listen to me very carefully, you obnoxious chitterling,' Grenville said quietly, 'because your very life depends on your response. We are not zoo animals. We are not a bunch of fucking pandas. We will not be herded into mating units for your amusement and delectation. So, one last time: are you going to allow these "lovely ladies" some small portion of dignity and reallocate the rooms, or are you going to spend the next three days shitting bits of undigested clipboard?'

  The guide looked down at his clipboard again. 'I think that can probably be arranged, sir.'

  'I think it probably can, yes.' Grenville stepped back. The rugby player slapped him on the shoulder. Gren had handled that well. He had marshalled his anger and used it to good purpose. Dr Roth would have been proud.

  The guide's cheeks were glowing red. He made a few scribblings on his clipboard and announced the new men-only guest list. 'OK, the rest of you come with me. You'll just have time to freshen up and change for dinner.'

  The guide stepped towards the door, clearly keen to get the hell out of there, but Grenville called him back. 'Whoa! What are we going to get changed into?'

  'Come again?'

  'Where's our luggage?'

  And again the idiot consulted his clipboard. What the hell was written on there? The Complete and Utter Guide to Everything? 'Didn't you bring it with you?'

  'It was in the minibus.'

  'Ah.'

  'Well, can you get someone to fetch it for us?'

  The guide glanced nervously at the door, as if he was assessing his chances should he have to try to make a bolt for it. 'Not really, sir. The minibuses have all gone.'

  'They've gone? What d'you mean, gone?'

  'They dropped you off, and then they... went.'

  'Well, surely someone unloaded our bags first?'

>   The guide looked down at the clipboard, then back up at the smouldering Gren, and back down again, as if it might bring him solace in this, the hour of his great need. Maybe it would. Maybe he had the Twenty-Third Psalm or Desiderata written on it. 'Let me check that for you, sir. Will that be all right? If I go and check it right now?'

  'It will be all right if you come back with our luggage. If you don't come back with our luggage, then it definitely won't be all right, and I will hunt you down like the dog you are, skin you alive and turn you into luggage. Will that be all right?'

  The guide nodded winsomely. 'I'll see what I can do,' he said and strode briskly out of the room.

  FORTY-SEVEN

  Jeremy glanced around nervously, trying to assess his probabilities of making an effective bolt for freedom, but it was ridiculous. Was he really going to try running away from armed professional killers? Even in the unlikely event he managed to avoid taking a bullet or seven to the back of the head from them, the place was swarming with armed police and SWAT teams with military-grade weaponry. Was there, possibly, a worse place in the world to be carrying Class A drugs? Jeremy doubted it. Had he known, Old Man Deleware? Had he guessed this might happen? Did he have advance information? Was he deliberately setting Jeremy up? The old stag, destroying the young upstart in the herd before he got too big to be dealt with? That would make some kind of hideous sense.

  Jeremy was trying not to sweat, but that's not possible. Your sweat glands have a will of their own. His mind was racing through all the possible outcomes of this search that might not somehow result in his arrest, humiliation and imprisonment. Perhaps the Secret Serviceman might not find the box. Unlikely: he was a member of the elite bodyguard of the leader of the nation. It was a fair bet he'd be pretty good at his job. Perhaps he'd find the box, and consider it too small to be of concern. Possible, but not probable. He was likely to be exhaustively thorough. Perhaps, then, the box was innocent and innocuous. Jeremy hadn't had the opportunity to check its contents. That was probably his best bet. But hadn't that bastard Anton said something about its being pure? Could he possibly have been referring to the silver the box was fashioned from? Dubious, at best.

  The Secret Serviceman straightened, and for a blissful moment, Jeremy thought it was over and he'd got away with it. But no.

  'Can you just show me what you've got in that pocket, sir?'

  Jeremy deliberately misunderstood and went for the wrong pocket. Desperate, really.

  'The other pocket, if you don't mind, sir?'

  He wouldn't be calling Jeremy 'sir' in a minute. In a minute he'd be calling Jeremy a stupid, dozy bastard. A perp. A crim. A lag. Jeremy took the box out of his pocket and handed it over.

  What an idiotic way to end up. One minute, basking before the world press, at the top of his career with a glittering future beckoning him, a favourite son, standing on the left hand of the country's most powerful politician; the next, handcuffed, disgraced and ruined. They would throw the book at him for this, surely. Seven years or so in prison were unlikely to improve either his looks or his job prospects in any significant way. The tragic irony was he didn't even use the bloody stuff, himself. He'd tried it once, and it had rendered him impotent. For him, cocaine was the equivalent of chemical castration, so he'd never touched it again. That bastard Deleware. That cunning, evil bastard. Well, Jeremy would certainly have plenty of time to plan his revenge. Plenty of time.

  The agent turned the box over in his hand and peered at Jeremy over his shades. He opened the box and looked inside. Jeremy couldn't see into the box from his angle. The agent peered at him again and snapped the box shut.

  This was it, then. Goodbye, cruel world. He rehearsed a few dismal explanations, all of which were unlikely to buy him leniency. It wasn't his box. He didn't know what was in it. He thought it was sherbet dab. Pathetic.

  The agent jiggled the hand that was holding the box, as if he was trying to assess its precise weight, and then handed it back to Jeremy.

  'All right, sir.' He nodded. 'You can climb on board now.'

  Puzzled, and almost dizzy with relief, Jeremy thanked the man and mounted the steps. Were the contents of the box indeed innocuous? Had Anton given him a completely innocent gift? Jeremy started to feel guilty about doubting the old man.

  The Secret Serviceman caught up with him on the steps and whispered in his ear: 'Christ almighty, lad. That little lot should make the party go with a bloody bang.'

  FORTY-EIGHT

  JEMMA BARTLET'S BLOG, MARCH 16TH.

  I'm afraid it's going to be another ranty blog, faithful readers. I'm having Relationship Troubles, I'm hating my new job, and then there was this new advert on the TV for an overpriced yogurt drink that has been proven to dramatically lower cholesterol. Proven, mind you. Dramatically, if you don't mind. So, all in all, it's been pretty much the week from hell.

  Let's get this cholesterol nonsense sorted once and for all. I'm quoting here from Ancel Keys, Professor Emeritus at the University of Minnesota. This is what he said as far back as 1997: 'There's no connection whatsoever between cholesterol in food and cholesterol in blood. And we've known that all along. Cholesterol in the diet doesn't matter unless you happen to be a chicken or a rabbit.'

  The italics are mine.

  Nothing you can eat or drink can possibly have any impact, whatsoever, on your cholesterol levels. And Ancel Keys is not just any old Professor Emeritus: he is the leading proponent of the cholesterol theory on the entire planet.

  We'll get back to that in a minute. First, let's look at what bastards men are: they are all bastards. Every last one of them. QED.

  Having reassured you all of my rigid adherence to clinical method and my unbending scientific impartiality, let's get back to cholesterol.

  We all know that high cholesterol levels are linked to heart disease, right? Actually, no. Not right. The truth is: after the age of fifty, the lower your cholesterol level is, the lower your life expectancy.

  I'm going to say it again, and I'm going to put it in italics, because, well, someone should: After the age of fifty, the lower your cholesterol level is, the lower your life expectancy.

  In fact, a falling cholesterol level sharply increases your risk of dying from just about everything.

  We really ought to be thinking about how to raise our cholesterol levels, not lower them.

  But, surely, saturated fats are bad for us?

  Think again. No study has ever shown reducing saturated fats in the diet reduces heart disease. In fact, a fifteen-year study in Finland found that businessmen on low-sat.-fat diets were more than twice as likely to die of heart attacks than those who weren't.

  So how is cholesterol supposed to cause heart disease? Well, take a deep breath, here's the science bit: cholesterol cannot actually enter the bloodstream directly: it's not soluble. Instead it gets packed into little spheres called lipoproteins which are then released into the blood. So you don't actually have a cholesterol level, in fact. What you have are levels of various lipoproteins. What we now think of as 'bad' cholesterol is contained in low-density lipoproteins, or LDLs. I don't want to make this too complicated, as some men might be trying to read it, but to cut a long story short, LDLs are produced from VLDLs (very low... etc.). What produces an excess of VLDLs is eating carbohydrates, and what reduces the production of them is eating fat. Hmmm.

  Anyway, the theory, if you can dignify this nonsense by calling it that, is that the LDLs somehow magically pass through endothelial cells into the arterial wall itself where they form arterial plaque. How they manage this is still an unexplained mystery. The veins, remember, are pretty much identical to arteries -- when you perform a heart bypass, you substitute the damaged arteries with veins (which then, incidentally, suddenly become susceptible to plaque formation). Why does cholesterol only start causing plaque when it reaches arteries? Why doesn't it fog up the veins?

  The current, lunatic theory runs something like this: LDLs head towards the arteries where they som
ehow force their way through cell walls and self-detonate like some crazy suicide bomber. It's hard to imagine anyone could come up with less credible scientific hogwash than that.

  The whole cholesterol theory is an absolute farce, and was dismissed as 'the greatest scam in medical history' by Dr George Mann in the New England Journal of Medicine, way back in 1977.

  So why does it persist? Why does the medical establishment still flog this dead horse of a theory, which is, and let's not mince words here, exactly the polar opposite of the truth?

  Well, our old friend vested interest is at work here. They're flogging the dead horse because people are still buying it. The market in cholesterol-reducing statins alone is worth in excess of PS20 billion a year. People have won Nobel Prizes on the back of it. And how else would you sell those dreadful margarines unless you could convince people spreading converted petroleum on their toasty soldiers was somehow healthy for them?

  And why else would you buy those crappy overpriced yogurt drinks?

  And, by the way: did I mention that all men are bastards?

  FORTY-NINE

  Jeremy Slank was sitting in the Prime Minister's private helicopter, only this time, the Prime Minister was sitting in it, too.

  What's more, he was sitting in the Prime Minister's private helicopter, with the Prime Minister and enough seriously illegal drugs in his pocket to satisfy the cravings of even Tony Montana at the end of Scarface.

  The Prime Minister, who never seemed to stop working, was busily approving documents, reading proposals and making executive decisions for most of the trip, and it was only when Jeremy began to recognise some London landmarks that the PM found a moment to spend with him.

  When the great man sat down next to him, Jeremy suddenly felt as if the box in his pocket had actually started to glow. He was genuinely worried it might burn his leg. 'Once again, Jeremy, magnificent work at ridiculously short notice. Sorry we had to spring it on you like that, but we had, uhm, a bit of a policy dispute with our last PR mob, who shall remain nameless.' He turned to share this golden nugget of a gag with the rest of the chopper, and though they couldn't possibly have heard him over the whupping of the blades, they recognised the purpose of the winsome smile and laughed, dutifully, anyway. He turned back to Jeremy. 'And we were left with our pants round our ankles, rather. You pulled them up for us, Jeremy, you pulled them up.'