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Dear Fern YOU LOOK FANTASTIC, BUT... Fighting the fat: Fern Britton (left) and Anne Diamond Pictures: BRIAN ARIS/ MURRAY SANDERS.

Article Excerpt
Byline: ANNE DIAMOND

Dear Fern YOU LOOK FANTASTIC, BUT...

MY FIRST reaction on seeing the photographs of you looking so svelte at an awards ceremony this week was: 'Well done!' You looked fabulous in that sleek black shift, but most importantly you looked healthy and radiant.

Do you remember Fern when we were both slim young things working as television presenters in the Eighties? It's wonderful to see you inhabiting the shape you once had. I know, from my own experience, how fantastic it feels to recover the figure you thought you'd lost for ever. At my slimmest, when I was presenting TV-am, I was nine stone and at my heaviest, three years ago, I weighed 15 stone 10lb. As a yo-yo dieter, I have lost and gained four stone three times over and I can honestly say I hate being fat.

Although we have never talked about it together, I suspect you feel the same way. I have yet to meet anyone who is happy being fat.

You are clearly brilliant at your job, a wonderful mother, have a strong marriage to Phil Vickery and always look happy but, if you are anything like me, then happiness came despite being fat.

Like you, Fern, when all conventional weight loss attempts failed, I secretly turned to gastric band surgery, which reduces the size of your stomach by placing a band around it and restricts the amount of food you can eat before feeling full.

And just as you were found out in May, I, too, was exposed and ousted from Celebrity Fit Club in 2006, accused of having an unfair advantage, even though it wasn't working for me.

Living through that miserable experience of having something...

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