By Boris Johnson (Filed: 19/12/2002)

Anyone who has ever tried to lose weight will immediately understand the spell of the ghastly Aussie conman Peter Foster. We all know, intellectually, that there is only one way to do it.

So horrifying is that reality, so deep is our spiritual need for an alternative solution, that we will succumb to almost any quackery on offer. Some go for jogging, in the footsteps of Jim Fixx, who pioneered the method and was rewarded, in a display of cosmic justice, with a heart attack.

Some have fallen under the spell of the wretched Dr Atkins, whose halitotic regimen of meat and cheese reduces its practitioners to sweating narcolepts.

Some believe in pills, like the ones offered by Cherie's guru's boyfriend. Some try that funny pink drink, a by-product of the Apollo moonshots, which is supposed to be a substitute for lunch and which sends you ever so slightly mad.

All of these weird creeds have been adopted, in moments of semi-religious desperation, by those of us who struggle with the problem of fatness. We all know, in that brutal rational corner of our brains, that they are nonsense. There is only one way to become thinner, and that is to restrict the quantity of food that passes your lips.

Even the NHS, terrified of offending the Fat Lobby, has tried gently to break this news to the public. I recently came across a government pamphlet on fatness, or "heaviness", as the NHS describes it.

"Are you worried that you are too heavy?" the NHS asks. If you read on, you will discover that top NHS doctors have determined that heaviness is associated with eating. Eat less, says the NHS, and you may find you have less of a problem with heaviness.

Isn't it wonderful to discover that Gordon's billions are being spent so efficiently? Now that the NHS has finally got a grip, and established that food is the cause of fatness, it is time for us all, in this season of bingeing, to concentrate on the exact size of the objects on our plate.

On the verge of the festival of overeating and guilt, I want to declare the pangs of conscience that I feel for the role of The Spectator in the great Pizza Express disaster.

It was back in June that Deborah Ross, our food critic and the domestic goddess of Crouch End, produced an expose so devastating that we had no choice but to put it on the front cover. She had sent out for 10 pizzas from a variety of places, including Pizza Express, in each case ordering a margherita with olives, ham and anchovies. She weighed them, and counted each anchovy and olive.

The results were crushing for Pizza Express. Its pie crusts are a tiddly nine inches in diameter, compared with 10 in at Pizza Bella, 11 in at Dominos, 13 in at Pizza Hut and La Porcetta and a stonking 14.5 in at Mauros. Pizza Express managed only 1.5 anchovies, compared with six anchovies at Pizza Bella, seven at La Porcetta, nine at Pizza Hut and 11 at Dominos and Mauro's.

For years, the middle classes of Britain, with their expanding waistlines, had been bickering to each other about the shrinking of the Pizza Express pizza. Now they had proof!

What happened next was a terrible lesson in the power of the press. The article was reprinted in a Sunday newspaper of the kind read by Pizza Express patrons. The following week, shares in the company fell off a cliff, and declined over the autumn from about £9 to £2.50.

It was hell for the company. They were as stuffed as a calzone. Something had to give. Two weeks ago, the company capitulated to the outraged appetites of Middle Britain. It was announced that Pizza Express would increase the diameter of its pizzas by 1.5 in, to 10.5 in.

No longer would there be a "crockery gap", a white ring of plate around the thing. No longer would Charles Clarke, the famously hungry Secretary of State for Education, treat a Pizza Express pizza as a kind of amuse-gueule, a limbering-up exercise before moving into the lasagne.

In all the newspapers, it was presented as a consumer victory, a triumph over the sneaky pizza shrinkers. In fact, as the pizzometers have now conclusively shown, it was no such thing. It was not that the Pizza Express offerings had been getting smaller.

Looking at the pizza rings the company has been using for the past 20 years, it is clear that nine inches is the official size.

It is simply that all the other pizzas have been getting bigger, along with airline seats, cars (which are almost all shaped like dirigibles nowadays), portions of chips, bottles of coke and all the rest of it.

The whole "scandal", so brilliantly exposed by Deborah Ross, was in fact an optical illusion. And instead of sticking to their guns, and asking the British middle classes to show some restraint and decency, Pizza Express has given in to the national lust to eat bigger meals.

If the old nine-inch pizza weighs 13 oz, and has a surface area of 63.62 sq in, we can calculate, using Pr2 , that the 10.5 in pizza has a surface area of 86.89 sq in and weighs 17.7 oz - a very considerable percentage increase.

It is regrettable but incontrovertible that The Spectator has exacerbated the nation's struggle to lose weight. Following recent American legal actions, fatties may seek legal action against Pizza Express. They created an addiction with small pizzas - and then pushed up the size!

As for the other pizza parlours, they will obviously fight back by restoring differentials. The middle classes will complain again, and the war of the pizza circumference will continue. Happy Crustmas. # Boris Johnson is MP for Henley and editor of The Spectator

-- Anonymous, December 19, 2002

Answers

If I have to be autopsied after I shuffle off, the ME will find Costco pizza on my hips. Now THAT's a pizza, just barely fits into my wall oven.

-- Anonymous, December 19, 2002

hmm, tight in the oven but snugily in the hips.

-- Anonymous, December 19, 2002