Come off it!!!
Watching early morning TV is enough to make your knees hurt
IN A futile effort to get her weight down, a friend has just invested in a walking machine for the home; so far, she has trekked from here to Calcutta and back again to lose a whole three ounces from both her knees.
Since the mid nineties, the number of private health clubs in Europe has risen by more than 20 per cent as, presumably, have the number of people having instant heart attacks while astride exercise bikes. This unprecedented surge in health clubs is primarily about obtaining weight loss so we can all aspire to becoming well-honed stick insects. It’s also to do with our fixation with health in general, which is tied in with our growing life expectancy; fifty years ago death was basically nature’s way of informing you that a hip replacement operation was way too expensive.
It would be difficult to name a star of stage and screen, other than perhaps Danny De Vito, who has NOT issued a standard ‘Shake and Vac’ fitness video. Now, as I found to my cost, there are highly invasive, and totally mind controlling, TV programmes aimed at selling every type of wacko Heath Robinson look-alike piece of matt black exercise gear known to the wily marketing men.
Now, unless you have chronic leg cramps or insomnia, few will be aware that in the wee small hours the TV programmes are awash with chaps called Jake and Bud who are so muscle bound that their arms are permanently angled in unbendable coat hanger mode. They are the hosts who will wax lyrical for an entire, non-stop 38-minute selling segment on the delights of using things like Jake’s ‘thingy’ machine.
These firm chaps do give one the clear indication that although both could, with consummate ease, crack roof tiles with their buttocks they would, if asked, be hard pressed to crack the theory of relativity. If we were guests in your home they would no doubt smile contentedly while shoveling down their throats the entire contents of your bowl of pot pourri.
Thirty eight minutes of hard sell is a jolly hard act to pull off but our Jake is no slouch in keeping the action moving, with surprise guests popping up to fill the dead air time and endorse Jake’s thingy machine.
It was the entrance of one Troy Hartman, a genuine west coast whacko, that really gained my total admiration for this type of on air salesmanship. If I actually knew where my abs were located I would have well and truly burst them as Troy then introduced himself as a suicide flyer. Leaping out of planes with a skateboard attached to his feet he pirouettes through the stratosphere, riding fluffy clouds and performing ballet movements until his pink parachute unfolds and he drops to the ground.
Troy, of course, could not have developed this rather pointless and highly suspect profession if he had not first been a disciple of Jake and his thingy machine. Standing there in the studio, clutching his now limp parachute, he woodenly recited to camera “The thingy by Jake has a patented ripple effect resistance system.” Wow!!!! Really Troy? In that case, send me one immediately.
Dean, a body builder, then emerges to fill the spot left by Troy. Not quite so articulate, Dean decides that demonstrating his crunches is really his only viable option. At this stage I can almost hear my pre-osteoporosis knees crack under the strain of watching as he ducks up and down for 300 of them without breaking into a sweat.
In other words, if you fancy a body capable of surviving acrobatic feats at 23,000 feet while attached to a flimsy strip of wood or wish to look like a sculpted granite gorilla with the brain capacity of a plate of mashed potatoes then all you have to do is whip out your plastic and place your order, and our Jake will send you his Thingy for a 30-day risk-free trial.
I then consulted an expert on the subject of these particular home fitness machines was told that most of the stuff on the market which promises tighter and tauter body parts is a complete waste of time and money. Period!
As the old saying goes ‘no pain no gain, so how can one realistically expect a waist-worn ripple, electronic ion dissolving machine thingy to magic away fifteen years of scoffing Big Macs and heavyweight Bangladeshi curries? I think not. Sorry Jake!
