If he thought he got nasty headlines for his politics, he ain’t seen nothing yet!!

Just in case you still think he’s a plonker – let me tell you, I think John Prescott has been very brave indeed to confess, in his new, hot-off-the-bookshelves, larger-than-life autobiography that he has suffered from bulimia.
Okay, so many cynics reckon it’s a cheap way to grab headlines and turn his book into a bestseller. But they underestimate the ferocity of the storm into which Prezza has just willingly dived. Because if he thought he got nasty headlines and malicious, snide comments from press and people for his politics, he ain’t seen nothing yet.
For some reason, the media absolutely loathes fatties and almost quite deliberately misunderstands the issues.
The day the news broke, I heard Radio 4’s Sue McGregor – by all accounts an informed and intelligent person – comment: “I don’t mean this unkindly, but his fight with bulimia seems to have been one which he seems to have lost!” The audience at Broadcasting House guffawed. “I thought bulimics were, some of them, unbearably thin, poor things! “ she added.
Then someone else made a stupid comment about Prezza’s Two Jags being to blame for his obesity – and so started day after day of cheap shots at Prezza’s expense in the newspapers, on tv and radio. And who would believe there were so many hundreds of pictures of him scoffing his face! Here he was cradling an enormous pack of fish and chips, there he was biting into a pie. Here he was sitting at a banquet, knife and fork at the ready and napkin tucked into his collar, there he was nibbling a sausage roll whilst on the campaign trail. The picture editors had a never-ending supply. And the vocabulary, unacceptable for any other medical condition, was vicious – “greedy”, “lardy”, “Fat boy” and everywhere, the inevitable question which is, in itself, a massive insult:  "Did Blair know he had left a sick man in charge?" For “sick”, read no compassion – just the assumption that a bulimic may not be mentally unstable, and therefore unable to do his job.
Bulimia and anorexia wreck lives – whether they affect painfully thin schoolgirls or a middle aged politicians. Are they part of the obesity epidemic we’re trying to fight right across the world? Is over-eating, like anorexia and bulimia, an “eating disorder”? I’d say yes. Are these conditions a sign of mental instability? As you cannot control your eating, and your obsession with food may actually be controlling you, does that mean you are mentally incapable of dealing with the rest of your life?
On my website, www.buddypower.net, we have hundreds of men and women who vehemently disagree with the idea they’re mentally unbalanced! They lead busy lives, juggling work with bringing up families. Many have big deal jobs, managing companies, people, money. Many are nurses!
Eating disorders – and I include overeating in this – are thought to be a symptom of stress. Stress is clearly a 21st century disease, and shows itself differently in different people. Some turn to drink or drugs, or compulsive shopping or gambling. Others, like John Prescott, turn to food – even when they’ve just got home from a five course banquet in the City. Apparently, when his bulimia became known within his immediate circle of family and friends, one close aide told him to simply “eat less”. Fat lot of good that did.
After much nagging from the wife, Prezza did eventually go to see the House of Commons doctor, who referred him to a specialist in eating disorders. He nearly turned tail when he saw the waiting room, full of anxious young women.
“Luckily, none of them shopped me to the press,” he remarked.
That’s the first thing I thought of, too, when I tried to seek medical help for my weight problem. I was terrified that someone would recognise me, and tell the papers. In the end, they did. When I was nervously awaiting obesity surgery in a Belgian clinic, some fellow British sufferer decided to shop me to the Sunday papers – which is how my gastric band became a public fascination rather than my own private worry!
Now if that’s not a sign of stress, tell me what is! It’s one thing to have a weight problem, or a suspicion that you’re out of control with your food intake – but it’s quite another to face the contempt of the media.
Yet I know a great many Fleet Street writers, photographers and editors, many of whom have weight problems, and even more who are near-alcoholics. I dread to think how many may have drugs problems, too. In the various broadcasting centres I have worked in, I have been only too aware of snorting going on in the loos, and performers who go in looking hangdog and miserable and who, moments later, emerge wide-eyed and buzzing.
But they’re okay, you see, because their problem is hidden rather better than the fatty bulimic or the anorexic.
We sophisticated, 21st century humans seem to have such a weird relationship with food. In India, as we all know, the poor are starving. So the emerging middle class, as a sign of success and wealth, found it desirable to become fat. Now they realise they’ve gone too far, and are queueing up for obesity surgery – some 20,000 women in New Delhi alone.
In the little island of Puerto Rico, the governor has declared childhood obesity an “island-wide emergency”. A whole generation of kids are presenting with high blood pressure, diabetes and heart disease. Yet still their culture celebrates “pudginess” as a sign of a healthy child. One top paediatrician there says 40 to 50 percent of the infants he treats are overfed. "The older generations, the grandmothers, are the ones who have this idea everyone needs to be chubby." he said.
Genetics have been blamed for fuelling the epidemic in Puerto Rico and other Latin American countries, where people's indigenous ancestors evolved to survive without a reliable food supply.
Those genes plus an overabundance of food is a deadly combination. At the moment, it seems to be more prevalent in the Hispanics and African-Americans. Almost unbelievably, 78 per cent of African American women are obese – that’s a whole population of mums and grans who could die early. But one day it’s going to show in most of us worldwide throughout all races and kinds.
According to one geneticist I recently interviewed at the University of Oxford, we have bodies that were created for a time of need, and we now live in a world of plenty. (Most of us, anyway).  Genetically, we cannot evolve quickly enough to stop us dying from obesity. So we need to find other ways. Quickly.
Like getting our head around the problem.
As John Prescott is going to discover, with the impending launch of his book, the media still thinks it’s funny, pathetic and worthy of ridicule and scorn.
Years of political bear-baiting may have prepared him for malicious attacks. But this is so personal, I fear for his strength. If it were me, it would send me right back to the biscuits and ice-cream.