Port, good wine, champagne are the liquid components of the Max Hastings diet that I remember from when he was the editor of The Daily Telegraph and I was a longish way down the Telegraph pole.
As for the solids, there are fading memories of him tucking heartily into fine cuisine when he hosted staff dinners at the Ivy and his gentlemen's club Brooks's, not to mention lunches for distinguished guests and selected hacks at the Telegraph offices in Canary Wharf.
The stronger memories of those lunches concern the alcoholic accompaniments; champagne and wine was served generously and it was not until three or four editors later that new proprietors ushered in greyer times and greyer people and put an end to such civilised and often valuable ways.
Max - Sir Max of course nowadays - is known to be very tall. He was not known to be overweight but in one of his regular Daily Mail features he reveals the shaming appearance of something familiar to quite a few of us. The French call it the Massif Central, he says, and that seems logical even if neither I nor my French wife have ever heard the phrase used in that context.
When his own wife pointed out this bulge, this man who had so often looked with horror at what fellow Britons put inside themselves at airports was horrified. He began an instant diet and has lost more than a stone in just over two months.
So what did Max identify as his downfall? Beer, chocolate, bread, cheese, butter, chips and other potato products. He has cut most of them out altogether, though the potatoes have disappeared from his life only ''most of the time" and he allows himself cheese "on social occasions".
In place of his cherished chocolate - Smarties, Kit Kat, Maltesers and the rest - he devours "tasteless, meaningless" Ryvita. Otherwise, it is a regime of fish and meat, risotto and green vegetables.
I was already thinking I could live with that when I remembered his assertion that the weight loss had been achieved without reducing his "admittedly excessive wine consumption".
But Max fears he has become a diet bore, at home and in company. His wife seems to be wishing she had never pointed out the Massif Central. She even lives in hope that a forthcoming pair of summer lunches, a family tradition for which he intends to suspend his healthy eating hobby, will bring the whole thing to a welcome conclusion.
But the Mail article has served its purpose. It may be time to banish the baguettes, pommes noisettes and Tomme de Savoie. Yes, I am already plotting to sign up to the Max Diet, the low-fat,low-carb, high alcohol route to slimness. With special dispensation allowing occasional lapses for the bread and cheese.
Recent Comments