Andy Richardson: Just a matter of time before my inner skinny fully emerges

My inner skinny is starting to emerge. And though it may be another six months before he steps up to the plate and wriggles his hips like an Argentinian tango dancer, it’s just a matter of time. Oh, and bottles and bottles of fizzy water. But, hey, what’s the length of a pandemic between belt holes? Slim times are coming. Woo hoo. It’s only been 20 years. What kept you, SlimBoyFat?

The judges are presently polishing my Slimmer Of The Year Crown and before we celebrate the first anniversary of Covid-19, I’ll be striding purposefully into the office looking six years younger – nah, let’s make it eight – with cheek bones that look like they’ve been chiselled from granite.

The diet, my friends, is on. I have already smoked one pair of size – cough – trousers. And more will soon follow.

The sumptuous wardrobe of beautiful clothes that were bought during marriage one but have hung unloved in a wardrobe for – cough – years, are sashaying their sexy ass along the catwalk – actually, in my case, it’s a dogwalk.

Soon, a wardrobe fit to grace the pages of Gove (that’s Michael Gove’s fashion magazine, it’s a bit like Vogue, but spelled incorrectly) will be seeing the light for the first time since the year two thousand-and-cough.

It would be unfair to say I’ve always been in a battle against my weight. A bit like it would be unfair to pit the military might of, say, the USA against that of Djibouti. It has always been a one-horse race. The penchant for fried food, sweet drinks and an avoidance of anything that might have been grown in the ground – except for crisps, which were once potatoes – has meant the scales have been tipped, quite literally, in the direction of fat.

A pal lost a stack of weight last year. He went from looking like heavy-smoking, hard-drinking snooker legend Bill ‘Big Bill’ Werbeniuk to Colin Jackson. His secret? Chilli-infused cheese and an app that counted his calories. Every dish he ate would be scanned for a barcode, then logged on his phone.

He grew to love his calorie counter as a man loves a dog. Each evening, he’d snack on cheese with tiny pieces of chilli wedged within, the flavour sating hunger pangs. Before he knew it, Big Bill had been replaced by a Super Colin.

Inspired by his story of success, I tried the calorie counter. Within three days, I’d deleted it from my phone. There were too many inconsistencies, dishes in restaurants didn’t come with bar codes and the whole was a faff, like redirecting your post when you move house or changing your phone when your contract expires. Far better to just sit on the sofa and eat crisps, I concluded, as I downloaded a far more productive app called Spillz, that lets you play computer games until 3am. Fun times.

When it comes to keeping fit and staying in shape, I’ve always had the best of intentions. In a former life, I ran marathons – 13 of them, since you ask. PB 3.21.22, I think. My dad once drove past me while I was running with a club and noted an athlete running well and looking good – only realising much later that it was his not-overweight-any-more son. Cheers, pops.

Those days are soon to return. Like Frank Sinatra launching yet another comeback, I can see my route back to glory – or, at least, a pair of 30-inch jeans. The years of buying clothes to slim into are almost over. I no longer need to squeeze myself into a pair of orange – yes, orange, they suit us closet gingers – trousers in the clothes store changing room then stash them away for ‘cough’ years, until they fit.

And it’s all thanks to my new app. Linked to a set of digital scales, it keeps a daily tab of 10 weight-related measurements so that I can track my progress as I snub a packet of Tyrrells salt and vinegar and instead decide to snack on my 57th punnet of lockdown raspberries.

Each day, the distance between what I weigh and what I’ll weigh when I’ve achieved my target gradually narrows. The percentages start to turn from amber to light green, then to a darker shade of Go, Go, Go. My metabolic age falls so that it’s closer to my actual age and something called BMI starts to take on a lighter shade of respectable.

It may take another 765 punnets of raspberries, but the orange trousers are finally within reach.