“Does my bum look big in this?”

“Not specially.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well... compared to the rest of you.”

“Oh charming! You are my husband; you’re supposed to say: No sweetheart, it looks lovely... or something.”

“Oh.”

“Well?”

“It looks lovely... or something.”

“Why can’t I ever get a sensible opinion from you?”

“Why do you have to ask me rhetorical questions?”

“Well, does it?”

“What?”

“Does it look big in this?”

“Yes.”

“(Wail)”

“Oh for goodness sake! We are Maltese, central Mediterranean people. We are short and, er... rotund. And – according to a report in Times of Malta recently, we’re among the most obese people in Europe.”

“O – what?”

“O – bese, fat, lumpen, overweight, portly, stout, corpulent. We are and will always remain like this. That’s just the way it is... deal with it.”

“All I want... all I ask for is a nice thin body to go underneath the head I already have.”

“Naar, it’d never work. A nice thin body could never support all those nasty fat chins.”

“Thanks a lot... for nothing.”

“Look... you’re only getting tetchy about how you look after all that crap in the media lately about Maltese obesity. Look at me, I suppose even I could be called obese.”

“Yes you could – and that’s because you are.”

“I know, and I’m comfortable with it. I know I’ll never look like George Clooney or Brad Pitt. I am a middle-aged Maltese man, in a middle-aged Maltese man’s skin.”

“But I don’t want to be short and fat. I am really a thin little girl inside a fat, forty-something woman.”

“Several thin little girls actually. But let that pass. You were never supermodel thin. If you had been I’d never have married you.”

The only exercise you ever get is working your thumb up and down on the TV remote

“Dead right. I’d have set my hat at someone a hell of a lot more attractive than you.”

“Quite! So learn to live with it, woman!”

“I can’t! For years I’ve been fighting the flab, trimming the tummy, choking the chins and stifling the spread. I’ve done years of pilates, decades of weightwatchers; I even joined a gym. I’ve tried the Atkins diet, the Cambridge diet, the grapefruit diet, the Beverly Hills diet. In fact, I reckon I’ve tried every damn diet known to man, woman or freak. I’ve given up bread, pasta, potatoes, alcohol, all oils and fats. I’ve even tried given up eating altogether. I’ve had gastric bands fitted, food aversion therapy, so many slimming pills I now rattle when I walk – and when I went for liposuction I was told it took four tankers to take away the blubber. And still after all that I remain stubbornly a short, fat female. Oh I can’t bear it! (Wail).”

“I told you all that was a waste of time. Better to be like me and just accept it. And anyway, I get enough exercise without resorting to all that pilates... gymnasium stuff.”

“Exercise? You? Don’t make me laugh. The only exercise you ever get is working your thumb up and down on the TV remote.”

“Excuse me! You are obviously forgetting last Tuesday.”

“What about it?”

“That, my precious, was the day I walked... yes walked into the village and out again, that was exercise.”

“Ha! To start with: The first reason you walked the two blocks into and out of the village was because the car was in for service. And the second reason was to buy a dozen pastizzi, which you then proceeded to devour on the sofa in front of the TV.”

“True, but then I’ve never wanted to look like an anorexic broom handle. Sweetheart, in case you hadn’t noticed: obesity is us!”

“(Long, loud wail)”