I see these exercise groups when I walk through Platt Fields on my way home from football on Thursdays. I don’t know if you are aware of them, basically there is a an overweight man dressed like a soldier shouting at people aged 25-35 while they do sit-ups and run around the park. I suppose it’s a bit like that thing that was on TV that I never saw but I think was  a bit like this, Celebrity Fat Cunt I think it was called.

I don’t really think this kind of thing is for me the ‘a man shouting “That’s not a sit-up” at me’. Apart from the general thing that it involves doing exercise for an extended period of time, I don’t take to being told what do very well. Unless it’s a woman in a pair of stockings wearing stilettos is telling me what to do while twisting the stiletto heel into my scrotum. Or a person who can put me in jail unless I do what they tell me to do. Or someone can fire me from my job  is telling me what to do.

Basically, my instinct is to tell someone to fuck off when they tell me what to do. So, when one of these men would shout at me for not giving more than 100% I’d just like to say, “Fuck off mate. You’re not in the army anymore mate. Helping someone lose a bit of weight before their holiday isn’t a war.”

I can just see the instructors sat on their own in a cottage, half a bottle of scotch to the good, looking at a withered picture of the boys from Alpha Patrol in Bremen back in 94 on manoeuvres – a shotgun with bullets in each chamber by the side of them.

Hey, if helping Sophie get back to her pre-baby weight is keeping that poor bastard going, if it’s the inspiration for him removing that metallic taste from his mouth then good for him. All I am saying is I don’t want Civvy Street making me wear a netball bib and shout that I’m not doing press-ups properly.