CLIVE SMITH: Fat-shaming could be the cure for our obesity crisis

It’s nothing exciting, mostly the usual ideas we’ve heard before like restricting advertising on junk food, stopping two-for-one deals on cakes and increasing prices on fat foods.

A new idea though is to restrict access to roads to encourage people to walk more. That’s all well and good, but exercise will only help to a certain extent. Weight loss is more to do with what you stuff in your mouth.

I had an operation a few years back where I was told to lose a stone. I pounded the streets for a couple of weeks, hated every second and decided it would be easier just to cut out the junk. It was easy to lose some of the fat around my bulging gut.

I lost even more after my op as I couldn’t eat properly for some weeks. I got skinny, I looked like I was in the final throes of a wasting disease. I didn’t like it. As a result I’m back with a BMI heading toward the wrong end of the graph.

So I’m not saying this from a stand-point of some ripped gym obsessive, far from it. But walking down the road with your ‘muffin top’ spilling out above your cheap Primark leggings is not a good look. With the amount of information around nowadays being fat is a personal choice, you don’t get bingo wings and beer bellies through ignorance.

With that in mind, why should all these restrictions be put in place because some people can’t control themselves?

Someone might want a two-for-one on a Danish from the local patisserie but will miss out because someone else likes to demolish four chilli doners over the weekend.

Pubs aren’t meant to serve someone who is drunk, they do, but if you’re really smashed they won’t. So, why don’t Burger King, Greggs et al stop serving people who are morbidly obese?

They should have scales by the checkout and your weight flashes up on a big screen with a green tick or a red cross next to it.

Yes, it would be fat-shaming, but that might be good thing.

THE POLICE MIGHT NOT DO ANYTHING, BUT CLIVE WILL

An unusual legal loophole has come to the fore which allows someone to park their motor on your driveway and there’s nothing the police or local authorities can do about it. Apparently you’d need to go to court to sort it out.

Now this is out in the open there’s bound to be idiots giving it a try. The only reason someone would do this is to cause trouble.

So, by all means feel free to park your car on my driveway, just give me a knock when you’ve got the money to remove the clamp I’ve put on it.

Or, oh, you’ve blocked my car in? Strange how the window is now smashed, the handbrake is off and the car is now the middle of the road.

SELLING YOUR VIRGINITY MIGHT NOT BE SUCH A BAD IDEA

A 26-year-old student from London is planning to sell her virginity for £1m.

She’s been getting plenty of abuse online with people calling her a prostitute and various other names. But, I think it’s a pretty good idea.

With a million in the bank she can be set for life – for something that most people lose for the price of a bag of chips and a bottle of MD 20/20.

Apparently, there’s a Premier League footballer and a Hollywood actor interested. It will probably turn out to be one of these false eBay-like bids and it’s really Martin from the Portsmouth Sunday League rocking up to the hotel room with four cans of Carling and a bunch of ‘garage flowers’.