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Everywhere I turn lately is Dr Gillian McKeith, the sickly poo lady. First, waiting for Wife Swap, I caught part of You Are What You Eat, then she turned up in the Guardian Weekend magazine and then, as I settled down to write this, Vernon Kay announced that she’s on his programme tomorrow and will be studying one of his stools.
That’s right. That’s what she does for a living. Not that Dr Gillian McKeith is a picture health herself; she looked pale, sallow and a little sweaty on TV. She was charged with changing the lifestyle of grotesquely obese couple John and Lisa Drake who have an incredibly poor diet. (This is reality TV so they happily discuss their sex life for the ratings; neither can be bothered and they’re infertile anyway.)
Inevitably, McKeith says it’s all in the poo and whisks ’em away for colonic irrigation. She insists on showing us the poo being washed out of the fatties bowels. Worse, John’s stomach ‘has no teeth’ and they have to massage the poo out of him. All of this is before the 9 o’clock watershed. Then she stupidly prescribes these ultimate couch potatoes an ultra-hippy diet. As if John’s going to stick to a weird (tofu?) porridge breakfast over a couple of cans of Red Bull. It’s so obviously too much too soon. If she really wanted to make a difference she’d start small – cereal, toast and fruit juice, say – and build towards health in a sustainable way. But no. She’s a nutter.
