Getting papped when you least expect it shatters the fragile ego

Jul 22 2008 By Richard McComb

We are obsessed by obesity and anything bordering on tubby, and thus newspapers are splashed with pictures of celebrity chaps with “moobs” and ageing, dethroned catwalk queens flashing flabby, cellulite-stricken thighs.

It is summer, kind of, so there will be lots more of these paparazzi snaps over the next month or so.

There will be Tony Blair and Jeremy Clarkson in clingy, wet shorts; and Jerry Hall and Fern Britton battling it out with stringy bikinis.

And I’ve got to tell you, it’s not easy being a celeb, like Jeremy and me. With the obvious exception of my picture byline (which doesn’t actually look like me at all), I’ve been pretty good at dodging the invading lens of the freelance snapper.

I accept I am fair game. I am in the public eye, and if you run with the dogs, you expect to get bitten.

However, a brilliantly managed media career means I had so far avoided any undesirable press shots.

And then I got “papped” at a VIP do – papped with Aldo “Give me a parmesan shaving” Zilli.

I was chatting to the TV chef at the recent Taste of Birmingham bun-fight – not that Aldo had a clue who I was (so that made two of us) – and then, the next morning, I found my mug plastered over a scurrilous Birmingham-based website that I can only describe as being associated with the worst excesses of tabloid journalism. Stan Collymore’s been on it.

It wasn’t the best picture of me, compounded by the fact there was a shot of my groin. I looked slightly silly, maniac in fact, although not as silly as Zilli, who was wearing red shoes.

The point I am making is that it is so easy for a picture to be taken out of context and for a celeb, like me, to be made to look bonkers, gurning like Amy Winehouse when she puts the bins out.

In my defence, I had engaged in some early evening binge drinking courtesy of the complimentary Champagne (Aldo doesn’t like champers – I told you he was silly) and hence looked mildly off message by the time I was papped.

Come on, if a man’s isn’t allowed to free-load drink in the teeth of a recession, when is he?

After viewing my picture online, ohh, I dunno, about 37 times – maybe 38, but that’s tops – I vowed to do something about my image and checked out one of the city’s leading gentlemen’s outfitters.

Here, I discovered something truly horrific.

It may well be an open secret in a fashion industry that promotes anorexia among women, but I had never come across it before in the chaps’ clothing department.

In the store formerly known as Rackhams, there was a whole rack of trousers for size … wait for it … it’s a shocker … size 28-29 waists.

How can a grown man, skeleton and all, have a 29-inch waist, let alone a 28-incher? I haven’t had a waist like that since I was seven, and I’m pretty sure the trousers I rifled through wouldn’t have got over the hips of my daughters’ Bratz dolls.

Trinny and Susannah witter on about the pressure on women to conform to ridiculous size stereotyping, the pursuit of Size Zero etc.

Well, like, hello sister, what about the boys?

It is we who are the forgotten victims of this image-obsessed age.

After seeing the self-harmers’ rack, I felt faint. I went to a café and ordered a latte – not any old latte, but an incey wincey, namby pamby “skinny” latte.

I didn’t even realise I was doing it. And how much fat can a cup of coffee really contain, especially if you don’t dunk with a double chocolate chip muffin?

I vowed to fight back in the only way I know how – by confronting my demons. Returning to the fray, I went to a backstreet store that sells cheaper Levi’s. (If you’re male, of an age, and still go shopping with your mum, you’ll know where I’m talking about.)

Joyfully there were jeans in my size, jeans for real men, for men of the prairies, and the inner ring.

I selected a couple of different “washes,” sucked in at the waist, looked in the mirror, and thought: “Yeah, baby. Still got the old magic.”

The shop assistant, now moist-lipped, concurred.

He said I rocked. I bought two pairs of 501s and returned home.

And then I modelled them, for my wife, which was a bad move.

“They’re awful,” she said.

She always says this when I buy clothes on my own.

So I asked her, “How awful?”

“Really awful. You look like Jeremy Clarkson.”

Which is stupid, because I don’t have a bubble perm.