What happened to all those delightful oddballs whose idiosyncrasies furnish us with an endless supply of amusing anecdotes to pass on to our straight-laced friends? The high tables of Oxbridge used to bristle with dippy dons who, according to their students, rode penny-farthings dressed like Mary Poppins or held their moral philosophy tutorials in bingo halls, or kept ferrets in the bath. Personally, I'm all for adding new characters, not just to TV drama, but to everyday life, which seems depressingly short of genuine eccentrics these days. And, to some extent, our weight may indeed be shaped by character: comfort eating - like fanatical dieting - is usually the outward expression of inner sadness.It is, in other words, an indicator of humanity. We all have our frailties: the trouble with fat people is that theirs are too visible. "Gluttony," as Orson Welles once mourned, "is not a secret vice." The bulimics, the exercise junkies, the insomniacs, the Prozac-poppers, the new puritans - they can all keep their psychological crutches to themselves, at least at work.Fat people may lack self-discipline in one particular area of their lives, but so does almost everyone.
Would a woman who always falls for bastards, or a man who never gets round to doing the chores, be considered unfit for work? Picking on fat people is as pointless as it is unkind: you can't get human resources without human failings.. Should I tog myself out in a crinoline and fake kiss curls and join the Dickens Society protest outside the BBC next week? They are up in arms about the latest adaptation of Bleak House because Andrew Davies, who adapted it, has taken the liberty of adding a brand new character to the book's already extensive cast of 57. "If you can't fit through the door, that would be a pretty good indication that you shouldn't go in at all."It is, of course, preferable to be slim: I do not know a single fat person who would argue otherwise. But such views are not, alas, confined to the boardroom.A serious Sunday paper recently ran an admiring article on the rise of the "new puritans": young people who have reacted against consumer culture by refusing to drink, smoke, buy big brands, take cheap flights, drive a fancy car - or get fat. Just like the corporations they despise, these anti-capitalist smuggypants regard weight as an indication of moral character."There should be really skinny entrances to McDonald's," suggested one waifish 26-year-old. The magazine asked 2,000 "human resources professionals" to choose between two equally qualified job applicants, one fat and the other of "normal weight".
A hefty 93 per cent chose the latter.Nor were they remotely apologetic about this bigotry. On the contrary: around half justified it on the grounds that fat people lack self-discipline. More than one in 10 thought being overweight was a sackable offence, and 12 per cent said they would not want such a social pariah coming face to face with a client.I have always been suspicious of anyone involved in "human resources" - a dehumanising piece of jargon if ever I heard one - and it's tempting to write these people off as stony-hearted corporate drones. Since the overweight are more likely to require medical attention, Ms Chambers is keen to get shot of them. Not with time-consuming schemes to help them to slim down, such as on-site gyms or healthy cafeterias; it is much simpler, as she explains in her memo, just to give them the cold shoulder."It will be far easier to attract and retain a healthier workforce than to change behaviour in an existing one," she writes. "These moves would dissuade unhealthy people from coming to work at Wal-Mart."There is a strange circularity at work here.