Don't be rude about my weight!

Should gym machines of the future only tell you when you've lost weight? Photo/File

AS Scotland and the referendum continued to dominate the British media, one might have been forgiven for thinking everything else had come to a grinding halt.

What a relief to find research had been continuing at University College London, where scientists had at last realised prejudice against fat people was as bad as racism. Worse still, it makes them resort to comfort eating and becoming too embarrassed to exercise.

For someone who has just returned from a French holiday - always a belt-loosening experience - this makes sense.

Fie on my gym which put my reluctance to get back on the rowing machine down to mere idleness. Double fie (dammit, Scotland has even affected the language) on my family who make grunting noises as I tuck into a second helping of pudding. Weightists all of them!

I cannot change the family, or at least not without losing some weight to make myself more attractive, but when the time comes I will certainly report the gym to the authorities.

Actually it goes further than that. Weightism has spread into manufacturing.

Surely it is weightism if my rowing machine dial shows that I am now less fit than I was. Worse still if my scales show I have become heavier.

In the brave new world of tomorrow, the machines will only be able to show an improved score and anything else will merely throw up a message saying: "No improvement this time but well done for trying."

In fact, the conclusions reached by the academics have been diluted by an officer of the National Obesity Council, who is reported by The Times to have drawn a distinction between pointing your finger and saying "Oi, fatty" - which for some reason they regard as unsympathetic - and a message delivered in the right way by a doctor or family, which could help the recipient to remedy the problem.

So that's it then; it's okay to point it out in a mealy-mouthed way but not to be blunt about it.

Perhaps the dial on the rowing machine can remain but be coloured a reassuring grey. But it's less easy in family terms. The family in which adolescents would deal gently with perceived parental porkiness is outside my experience. Maybe somewhere in outer space ...

Still, it isn't just weightists we have to contend with. What about mindists ("Oi, stupid") or dressists ("Oi, you scruffy oik") or noisists ("Oi, speak up" or "Oi, shut up")?

They all need to be confronted. Once you start adding them up, though, there will be no one left to do the confronting. Perhaps then we should reserve our censure for the worst of the "ists" like racists, sexists or those prejudiced against ginger hair. Oh, no - we've got back to Scotland again.

Before retiring, John Watson was a partner in an international law firm. He now writes from Islington, London.