Absolutely not fat at all, I’m big-boned, like the rest of my family. I tell you, when I read recently that Maltese men are among the most obese on the planet I... well I was so incensed I nearly dropped my bag of pastizzi.

I – and my equally normal siblings – are, I’ll admit, a tad chunky. But chunky isn’t fat, for goodness sake! I regard myself as belonging to a fairly typical Mediterranean type. Yes, I am quite short. Sure, I haven’t seen my feet – or anything else below my waist – for four years. OK, I do have, what some might call, a bit of a gut. But that doesn’t make me obese!

So I like and enjoy my food, is there anything wrong with that? I am a healthy... or healthy-ish 40-something Maltese man who likes his pasta and patata fil-forn. I mean, who doesn’t?

So I don’t exercise much, I don’t know many of my contemporaries who do. Well, that’s not entirely correct; I did once join a gym. Ha! What a waste of time and money that was! I was a member of the Flash Abs fitness centre for six whole months – and rather than losing weight... I actually gained four kilos. And I don’t think things would have been any different had I made the effort to attend the damn place.

I was a member of the Flash Abs fitness centre for six whole months – and rather than losing weight... I actually gained four kilos

No, I am certainly not, repeat not... fat. Neither is my wife, nor my kids. It’s quite true that, at one time, my eldest boy Martin was teased at school, where he was known as Michelin-man Martin, but he’s not what you would call fat. When he was born, he was nothing more than bonny... then graduated to chubby. No more than a healthy lad... with a few respiratory problems perhaps and has some difficulty to get out of an armchair, but nothing more than you’d find in any normal Maltese child, raised on a nourishing diet of Twistees and timpana... washed down with Fanta and Coke. Listen, nobody is going to accuse me of depriving my kids what they enjoy.

I am becoming more and more convinced that all this healthy eating nonsense is, frankly, just that... nonsense. Don’t tell me the sight of my little boy eating his way through 17 bars of high-fibre muesli bar is any more healthy than watching him stuff his face with just 10 or 11 Mars bars... right?

And this brings into total disrepute all the current rubbish being written and talked-up regarding Maltese obesity. Take my wife, for example: To the untutored eye she may look like a beached whale, a gargantuan dollop of excess adipose tissue. But to me she’s still the corpulent, cuddly little slobette who destroyed four double beds in the first six months of our marriage... bless her chubby little wide expanse of butt.

I mean, I don’t want to clamber between the sheets with some scrawny, skeletal slapper with all the give and padding of a piece of scaffolding... no thank you! I – and I think most normal Maltese men – would far rather cuddle up to someone with lots of padding to spare. It is the Maltese way.

A few months back, my doctor – poor misguided fool – decided that, in his opinion, I needed to lose at least six kilos in weight. Ludicrous I know, but he claimed that the fact that it took me 12 minutes to get out of my car, with two people pulling and two pushing, was indicative of the fact that I was, again in his opinion, morbidly obese.

He put me on a diet and recommended an exercise regime, designed to help me lose weight. Stupid man. I tried to tell him I was perfectly happy being 140 kilos, but he didn’t want to listen. So I did what any other sane, red-blooded man would do: I changed my doctor.

So no, read my lips here: I – am – not – fat! I am Maltese... and yes, there is a difference, even if it’s not immediately apparent to the naked eye.