LA Fitness seem to be doing this campaign at the moment to get people up by using the imagery of Full Metal Jacket - right down to shouty, angry looking drill sergeant and all. It is a bold campaign, and I dare say it will work with some. Although I can't help but remember how that particular section of Full Metal Jacket ended.

Yet it is not just the ever present threat of murder-suicide that puts me off this campaign. It is everyone I have seen on the streets handing out leaflets for it. They have been, without exception, fat. And not just a little bit tubby. But fat. Even the faux-drill sergeant who was leading his platoon of human teletubbies up and down the road outside work on the first day back after Christmas had something of the beached whale about him.

Which I just don't get. Surely, the people advertising this tiresome gym should not only look like people who would actually use the gym, but also people who have used the gym successfully? Maybe I'm missing the point, but by having tubs of lard handing out leaflets for a gym makes me think that by joining that gym you pile on the pounds and end up a heffer. And I don't need to join a gym to end up like Billy Bunter. I could just sit in the comfort of my own home, eating pies...