I'd go downstairs and get a pork pie and place it on a white plate so that it was just off centre, and then I'd get some brown sauce and smear a little on the edge of the plate, always trying to make the shape of the map of Barnsley Metropolitan Borough in sauce.

I was an artist. A pie-tist. A sauce-erer. Then I'd open a bottle of red wine and glug it into a glass and sit and watch Casualty and I'd be the happiest man in the world with a scattering of crust-crumbs on my gownie and smears of wine and sauce around my chops. What was the word? Elegant. That was the word: elegant.

I reckon this routine was just me trying to replicate the idyllic Saturday nights of my childhood when I'd have an early bath, go downstairs in my pyjamas and my gownie, watch telly and eat crisps. Bliss. Bliss, but not very healthy.

You'll have noticed that I've been writing about the Saturday evening routine in the past tense. And that's because it's gone. Finished. It is, in the words of John Cleese in the Dead Parrot Sketch, deceased. Actually, three elements of the routine remain: the early bath is still there, the gownie is still donned and I still watch Casualty. The pie and the wine have bitten the dust.

I'd noticed over the last couple of years that I was getting porkier. My chins were multiplying. My breasts were getting like Jordan's. I felt, for me, sluggish. In profile I looked a bit like one of Montgolfier's early balloons or a bloke going to a fancy dress party as Humpty Dumpty's older brother, the one with the grey hair and the glasses.

I contemplated, but only for a few seconds, growing one of those fat man's goatee beards, the ones that are meant to define and indeed sculpt an otherwise moon-like face but end up looking like somebody's been scribbling on your chin with a felt-tip pen.

I'd get the train home from London after a hard day spouting on the
radio and I'd have a can of fizzy beer. And then another one. Somebody would come by with a trolley of goodies and I'd buy a bag of crisps. And maybe a flapjack. And the odd thing was, I was convinced that I wasn't doing myself any harm.

After all, flapjacks are healthy, aren't they? And they were low fat crisps. And the fizz in the beer reduced the calories. And if I stood up and went to the buffet and the train was going a hundred miles an hour then I'd walked a considerable distance by the time I got back.

Then two things happened: my wife decided that we should try to eat a healthier diet, and I went to the doctor for what they euphemistically call a Well Man Checkup. The doctor looked at me and he said: "Well, man, you're overweight." He didn't, actually, but he may as well have done. He showed me the evidence. I was obese. I was just half a flapjack away from being morbidly obese. And I saw my Saturday night pork pie and my glass of wine and my on-train snacks going out of the window.

So, for the past few months I've been trying my best to be good. Since my student days I've never been a big drinker but the beer and the wine have gone. I don't miss them, to be honest, although I have to say that a sip of orange juice cannot in any way replicate the first mouthful of a good real ale, but I can live without it.

The pies, though. The pies. I really miss the pies. For the first couple of weeks after giving up pies I dreamed about pies every single night. Oddly sensual dreams about pies just off centre on white plates, lounging seductively on a bed of brown sauce. In the dreams, pies on legs would walk towards me on the street and try to get me to take them home. I always resisted, of course. Well, almost always; it was only a dream, after all.

The good news is that I'm feeling and looking better. My wife noticed first; she said: "Your belly's going down." And it was. And it is. It's an obvious thing to say, but I feel lighter because I am lighter. There aren't so many chins. The breasts are shrinking. I think I saw a stomach muscle the other day but it could have been a trick of the light.

It's the crust I miss most, though. The beautiful, crumbly crust. And the meat. And the combination of the crust and the meat. And the sauce. And the combination of the crust and the meat and the sauce.

Stop it! Time to go for a walk!