I'm going on a '˜Speedos diet'

In fact this winter has been so tedious and drawn out that even I have been forced to dig into my very narrow pockets and book the family holiday earlier this year, rather than hang on until July and enter the lottery of trying to find a last minute bargain.

Like millions of others, I succumbed to the wall-to-wall advertising which beckons us to the beach, theme parks and holiday camps and signed on the dotted line, long before the seemingly never-ending January drew to a close.

After recovering from the initial shock of being reminded what a fortnight away in the school holidays actually costs, I am looking forward to 14 days of red wine, sweaty cheese and awkward exchanges in hypermarkets as I attempt to put my remedial French to use.

Or at least I was looking forward to it, until I learned about the rules relating to swimwear across the Channel. I was blissfully unaware that, when using public swimming pools in France, blokes have no choice but to pull on a pair of Speedos due to real concerns about hygiene.

Yup, that’s right, budgie smugglers are mandatory. Which is fine if you are 21, eat steamed fish and nuts and complete 200 press-ups before your muesli and plain yogurt but not so fine if, like yours truly, you count chips and mushy peas as two of your five a day.

There was a time when I would have been happy to don a pair of skimpy trunks and that time was shortly before my 16th birthday, which was prior to me discovering Boddingtons and indolence.

Nowadays I bear more than a passing resemblance to a ever so slightly deflated Space Hopper on legs, which is why I need to take some sort of decisive action if I am to avoid ridicule in six months time.

And so I have to come up with a way to, not only, lose two-and-a-half stone between now and the summer but also how to acquire a washboard stomach.

It may well be that this miserable winter might just last a little longer.