Andy Mitchell from Radio Wave

How’s that New Year keep fit regime of yours going? .... you know the one you told everyone about last month and they gave you that knowing look.

You probably spent a fortune on gym membership promising yourself that deal to appear on the front cover of Hello Magazine would be surely in your grasp by summer. Did you get all the kit and stuff to go with your New Year’s resolution? And the killer question... ‘Have you actually BEEN to the gym yet?’

I’m not sure I could go to a gym, although they’ve changed a bit since I was a kid. The whole memory of wall bars and ropes whilst dressed in the skimpiest of white shorts on a cold Monday morning was enough to put me off for life.

I hated Games too. That impending doom of Wednesday afternoon when all that mattered was getting filthy, cold and drenched through took the place of the common sense option of catching up on some Prep or something in the warm.

But today’s gyms aren’t about that sort of getting fit are they? It’s a sort of ‘designer’ regime where the talking about it on social media afterwards and drinking shakes in public is all part of the image.

Surely it’s about booking that fancy machine in full view of the street so can be SEEN to be getting fit... hence the fact you wouldn’t dream of being seen in public in your PE kit.

So the business of getting fit relies on us maybe not as much wanting to actually lose weight, or we’d be thrashing around the streets in the rain at night when no-one would see us, dressed in anything warm and it wouldn’t bother us. The struggle to report at work that you’d maybe lost a pound or two over a few weeks is enough for our colleagues to say what we’ve been wanting to hear since before the holidays “Wow..you DO look good!”

The best moment of the first month of the new year, was the point at which my boss said to me “Happy New Year Mitchell...y ou’ve lost weight!”

I was thrilled. I’d also turned up to work in a new suit. I didn’t tell him it was a size too big.