Downsizing: Tipping the Scales
Chapter 1 from my Sunday Times best-selling book, Downsizing
We Watsons loved our food and, thanks to my mum (or ‘mom’ if you hail from the West Midlands), we certainly got our fair share of it. While the family coffers weren’t exactly overflowing – my parents both worked for the council, and didn’t earn a fortune – Mom budgeted very well and always ensured that her brood enjoyed plenty of good grub. Our Sunday lunches were a weekly institution.
While Mom got everything prepared at home, Dad would take me, my brother and my sister to a working men’s club, the Habberley, where he’d sink two or three pints with his mates as we drank Coke, munched Quavers and played on the fruit machines. We would make our way back home at about three o’clock, to be greeted with a meal of either steak and kidney pie served up with creamy mash and peas, or roast beef and Yorkshire puds swathed in home-made gravy.
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Despite being stuffed to the gills – Mom’s portions were massive – we’d invariably make room for pudding. There would be a chorus of ‘mmmmmm’s as Mom, wearing oven mitts, brought in crowd-pleasing desserts like syrup sponge served with custard or, if the ice-cream van happened to come down our road that afternoon, dollops of Mr Whippy. Legend had it that Margaret Thatcher helped to invent that particular brand of ice cream when she was a chemist in the 1950s. ‘That woman stole your school milk, Tom, but she also gave you Mr Whippy,’ my dad would say.
My parents split up in the late seventies, sadly, but the Sunday lunches continued with my stepdad Barry at the table. Indeed, he loved Mom’s apple pie so much that he persuaded her to commercialise production. ‘D’you know what, Linda, people would pay good money for that pie,’ he’d often say, wiping the crumbs from his mouth with the back of his hand. ‘No one makes pastry like you.’
‘Thanks, Barry, love,’ she’d reply, beaming.
He wasn’t wrong. Soon Mom would be selling her sweet and savoury offerings to our local Berni Inn, based at the Riverboat restaurant on Blackwell Street. The place was the height of sophistication in 1980s Kidderminster, boasting a huge all-you-can-eat salad bar and housing one of the few Atari ‘Pong’ arcade games in the area.
Mom’s culinary repertoire became even more adventurous when she subscribed to Supercook magazine, and my brother, sister and I would return home from school to be greeted with the aroma of her freshly baked creations. Her showpiece Battenberg cake, with its pink ’n’ yellow chequerboard, blanketed in thick marzipan, looked almost too good to eat.
Unfortunately, there was no such food heaven at school. In the early 1980s, the Tory-run Herefordshire and Worcestershire County Council had sacked the dinner ladies at King Charles I Comprehensive and, in the name of progress, had decided to privatise the service. Almost overnight, canteen-cooked meals were dropped from our lunchtime menu, and were replaced with reheated fast food including hot dogs, hamburgers and doughnuts. Those pupils entitled to free school dinners (me included) were given yellow meal tokens worth 45p, which only stretched to a battered sausage and a handful of chips.
Unimpressed, I’d often flog my token for 40p, sneak out of the school gates and scamper over to Captain Cod’s on Station Hill. There, I’d hand over my ill-gotten gains for a ‘Scholar’s Special’: a steaming parcel of sausage and chips (35p) plus a potato scallop (5p). Mrs Thatcher might well have been proud of my entrepreneurial spirit, but Mom was having none of it.
‘Tom, you’ll get into bother,’ she muttered one day after some local busybody had spied me queuing outside the chippy in my school uniform.
‘If they end up taking your tokens away, you’ll be using your pocket money instead.’
In spite of my hearty appetite, I was an averagely built teenager (playing lots of schoolboy rugby probably helped to keep me slim). I really started to pile on the weight in my early twenties, however, having become addicted to junk food and cheap beer while studying politics at Hull University.
There, I’d found myself developing a fondness for beer and burgers, and a weakness for the city’s drinking dens and takeaways. A bellyful of Skol in the John McCarthy Bar was often followed by a chicken madras from the venerable Ray’s Place. I would frequently be accompanied by my housemate, Neil Codling, a great lad who, incidentally, would one day end up playing keyboards for Suede.
Fried breakfasts were the order of the day in our Young Ones-esque student digs, comprising platefuls of greasy eggs and gristly sausages, served up with baked beans, HP sauce and a stack of buttered white bread. My role as president of the Student Union wasn’t exactly conducive to a healthy lifestyle, either, since the events I helped to organise – gigs, ceilidhs and freshers’ festivities – were often very boozy affairs.
As time progressed, and my penchant for anything fatty, fizzy or sweet persisted, I ballooned rapidly and was forced to upsize my baggy, beige Marks & Spencer cardigans to Large. And then to Extra Large. It was around that time that I received a stern talking-to from the university’s GP. I had visited her surgery for some flu medication, and while I’d been there she’d decided to measure my height and weight. ‘You’re fifteen and a half stone,’ she’d said, grimacing as I’d stepped onto the scales. ‘You do realise that’s in the obese BMI range, don’t you?’
I confessed that I’d never heard of this ‘BMI’, or body mass index, which prompted the GP to explain its implications and question my fitness and nutrition. ‘Putting it simply, Tom, you need to eat less, drink less and move more,’ said the doc. No one had ever upbraided me about my weight before – maybe they’d not seen it as their place to do so – yet I felt suitably admonished and embarrassed enough to take action.
First and foremost, I enrolled at the campus sports centre, signing up for some circuit training sessions and occasionally using the cycling and rowing machines. Then I had a stab at moderating my food intake, albeit rather half-heartedly. For two or three months I only ate fried breakfasts at weekends, and I replaced my carry-out curries with microwaved ‘healthy options’ (although the portions of the latter were so tiny I often ate two).
While I wasn’t prepared to give up alcohol – Dr Killjoy wasn’t going to deny me that – I compromised by substituting my pints of lager with halves. Despite all this, my weight remained static, and I couldn’t say that I felt any healthier. Resigned to the fact that I was innately hefty – and assuming I was naturally ‘big-boned’ – I quit the gym, binned my diet and resumed my old habits. Sod that for a lark, I thought.
‘Steady on, Tom, no one’s going to take it off you,’ I remember my housemate Simon Shott saying as I wolfed down a Friday night doner kebab, sluicing it down with a ‘full-fat’ Coke. ‘You know what, I could eat another one of those,’ I’d said, smiling, as I polished off every morsel of my meat ’n’ carb fix, convincing myself that I simply needed more fuel than my slimmer, sprightlier friends.
As it transpired, I quit university earlier than planned to take up a role with my beloved Labour Party as a youth development officer. Left-wing politics had run through my family like letters in a stick of rock and, for me, the lure of a job at the Walworth Road HQ had been impossible to resist.
My parents were long-time party members and activists – Dad had served as a local councillor in our home town of Kidderminster – and our kitchen was always alive with debate and discussion regarding the issues of the day. Whether it was the Watergate scandal in the United States, or Margaret Thatcher coming to power in the United Kingdom, the Watson clan (including my younger brother Dan and my little sister Meg) were well-informed on the issues of the day.
Around the time of the Three-Day Week – and during one of the many power cuts we experienced during the electricity shortages – I vividly remember lying on my top bunk, eating a banana sandwich in the dark. ‘Why do the lights keep going off, Dan, and why is Mom walking around with a candle?’ I asked my brother, who always kipped beneath me on the bottom bunk.
‘She says it’s because that horrid Mr Heath won’t pay the miners enough money,’ came his reply. I was an activist from an early age. I remember when I was seven years old, during the 1974 general election, helping out my parents by delivering Labour Party leaflets through letter boxes, collecting polling numbers at the nearby Franche Primary School and pasting electoral registers onto display boards with Copydex.
I became completely enthralled by the procedures and mechanics of the voting system, whether it was the Get Out the Vote (a.k.a. ‘GOTV’) battles between local volunteers, or the excitement of the final count in the town hall. I loved observing the candidates as they nervously watched ballot papers being sorted into piles, always crossing my fingers for the person sporting the big red rosette.
As it happened, the youth development job was my second role at Walworth Road. I had actually secured my first position with the Party in my late teens, having just left sixth form. Fancying a taste of London life – I’d become a tad bored with life in provincial Kidderminster – I’d applied for a £5,400-a-year trainee library assistant post, and had been thrilled to get the job. Being a computer nerd worked in my favour, I think. Although I’d spent many an hour playing Manic Miner and Jet Set Willy on my Sinclair ZX Spectrum, I’d taught myself some elementary coding, too. This fitted in with the library’s plans to invest in a computerised database for lendings, returns and renewals (‘It’s the future, Tom,’ I was told at the time).
My remit also included collating press clippings from the daily selection of tabloids and broadsheets, and typing up documents for various MPs, councillors and activists. On my very first day, in the winter of 1984, I found myself sharing a lift with party leader Neil Kinnock and his deputy Roy Hattersley, but was far too star-struck and tongue-tied to utter a single ‘Hello’ or ‘Good morning’.
Further down the line I’d receive a handwritten letter from the great Tony Benn (whom my dad hero-worshipped) thanking me sincerely for assisting him with the cuttings service. I treasured it for years. Not long after my start date, I was taken out for lunch by a senior member of staff, Ted Higgins. He took me to the nearby Tankard pub in Walworth Road to sample their legendary 40p sausage baguette and, being on the executive committee of the Campaign for Real Ale, he introduced me to Bass beer.
I fell asleep at my desk that afternoon – not the last time that would happen to me in my working life – but I made amends the next day, joining in with the staff aerobics session that regularly took place in the top-floor boardroom. Walworth Road was abuzz with activity in those days.
In 1985, singer Billy Bragg had launched the Red Wedge musicians’ collective to attract younger voters to the Labour Party, and I was asked to support the promotions team, who were organising a variety of concerts and events featuring artists like the Communards, Elvis Costello and the Attractions, the Style Council and Madness. For me, this was both a pleasure and a privilege – I was an NME- reading indie-music aficionado – and, in January 1986, I remember being in my element as I watched Billy, Paul Weller and an avant-garde duo called Frank Chickens performing at the Birmingham Odeon. That evening’s compère (who also happened to work in the Red Wedge office) was the inimitable ‘Porky the Poet’, also known as comedian Phill Jupitus.
We often chatted about music at Labour Party HQ – he knew loads of up-and-coming bands – and I remember him handing me a shiny new Housemartins badge as we chinwagged by the photo-copier. I bid farewell to Walworth Road after the 1987 general election to take up a job with the Save the Children charity, before embarking upon a short-lived stint as an advertising agency account executive.
Hull University subsequently intervened, and then – four years after my librarian role, and carrying three extra stone (19 kilos) – I found myself back at Labour HQ. ‘Wow, Tom, you’ve put on some timber,’ commented a party activist who’d known me back in the day. ‘What happened, eh? Did you overdose on fish and chips up north?’ As I smiled through gritted teeth, I remember thinking Oh, do fuck off, you cheeky bastard…
I graduated from youth development officer to deputy general election coordinator (my seven-year-old self would have been so impressed), working under legendary campaigns manager and bon viveur Fraser Kemp. Then, operating from the new Labour Party headquarters in Millbank, I became part of the well-oiled machine that helped to propel Tony Blair into 10 Downing Street on 1 May 1997.
However, when the dust settled, and when promises of a more influential post-election role failed to materialise, I decided to apply for the position of national political officer with the Amalgamated Engineering and Electrical Union (AEEU). Based in the Kent town of Hayes, it was a hands-on campaigning role that included a great deal of weekend work and late-night meetings. The camaraderie and comradeship was second to none, though.
One of my closest colleagues was the incomparable Bill Tynan, a regional officer in their Glasgow office who, shortly after I’d joined the union, had taken great pleasure in introducing me to a 250-strong convention of electricians and engineers in his native city. ‘This is Tom Watson,’ he’d announced on stage, throwing me a sideways glance. ‘He’s from our head office in London, England. He used to work for Tony Blair, at Labour HQ, in Millbank, London. Today he’s come up to Glasgow, Scotland to tell us how to do our politics. Over to you, Tom…’ Cheers for that, Bill, I thought, as boos and jeers (good-natured, I hoped) floated across the auditorium.
I survived the meeting – just – and afterwards Bill and his fellow activists, Gerry Leonard and Allan Cameron, whisked me over to a city-centre pub to sample some local hospitality. There was a significant drinks culture in union circles – they worked hard, and definitely played hard – and it was only after downing pints of beer for eight hours solid that I was allowed to stagger back to my city-centre hotel.
Back at our Hayes HQ I met a no-nonsense Yorkshirewoman called Siobhan, who was based in the estates department. I had actually first met her at a somewhat bizarre work night out – she’d beaten me in an arm-wrestling contest at an Elvis impersonators’ restaurant in Streatham – and we’d immediately hit it off. I recall inviting Siobhan over to my Bromley flat for our first evening meal together, and spending the afternoon cleaning my kitchen from top to bottom; I don’t think she’d have been impressed by the columns of empty Stella Artois cans, or the leaning tower of Domino’s pizza boxes.
We were soon engaged to be married, and began to make plans for a July 2000 wedding in a Kidderminster church. I got myself measured up for a smart two-piece suit – it was so expensive I had to borrow the money for it – and Siobhan found herself a nice bridal gown. Throughout the spring, however, I had so many lads’ nights out (including a five-day stag do in Barcelona) that I had a shock when I rocked up for the final suit fitting. All my partying had taken its toll and, as I surveyed my reflection in the mirror, all I saw was my gut hanging over the waistband and my chest bursting out of the shirt.
‘The wedding’s only a month away,’ I groaned. ‘There’s no way I can turn up looking like this.’
I arrived at work the next day in full-on panic mode, asking my colleagues if they had any emergency weight-loss advice. Coming to my rescue was my PA, Cathy Pearce, who delved into her desk drawer and handed me a photocopy of the cabbage soup diet. ‘If it’s a quick fix you want, Tom, this’ll do the trick,’ she whispered, folding it over as if it were subject to the Official Secrets Act.
‘I won’t lie, it tastes horrible and it’s a little, erm, unsociable, but some of the staff have sworn by it.’ ‘You’re a star, Cathy,’ I replied, before heading off to the local Asda to plunder their stocks of savoy cabbage and vegetable Oxo cubes. My workmate wasn’t wrong. While I rapidly lost weight on this bland, boring diet – I whittled myself down to 17 stone (108 kilos) – it proved to be insufferable not only for yours truly, but also for those friends, family and colleagues who had the misfortune to share confined spaces with me. Let’s be honest: I reeked from both ends.
At home I went through about twenty canisters of Air Wick, and at work Cathy would casually leave packets of mints on my desk to nullify my cabbage-scented belches. All this effort had the desired effect, though – thank God – since I just about managed to squeeze into my posh suit on the Big Day. Unsurprisingly, by the end of our honeymoon in Bali I’d regained much of the weight I’d shed. After weeks of fasting on watery soup, I was desperate to eat some proper food. ‘I never want to see another cabbage again,’ I said to Siobhan as I tackled a huge plateful of pad thai.
Physically, my wife and I were like chalk and cheese, so much so that some friends playfully dubbed us ‘Laurel and Hardy’. Siobhan was a slender, sporty fitness fanatic who had plans to train as a boxing instructor, while I was a lardy, lethargic couch potato who got breathless walking to the corner shop. And, as time went on, my eating habits began to spiral out of control.
A prime example of this occurred during a weekend visit to some friends in Oxford. On the Saturday evening they rustled up a delicious beef casserole, followed by a dessert of home-made Bakewell tart and custard, which they knew was a particular favourite of mine. After coffee and mints, we spent a pleasant few hours chatting, drinking and listening to music, but when they finally went upstairs to bed – and with my stomach rumbling non-stop – I felt compelled to make a detour. I crept into my friends’ kitchen, quietly opened their fridge and ogled the left-over Bakewell tart.
I’ll just have a tiny sliver for supper, I thought, as I grabbed a jammy wedge and dipped it in the jug of cold custard. One’s not going to hurt, is it?
Before I knew it, however, I found myself polishing off the remaining three slices too, leaving behind just a smattering of pastry crumbs. Any sense of dignity, propriety and restraint vanished as I succumbed to an intense and irrepressible urge to sate my hunger. I didn’t enjoy it. I didn’t even taste it. I just had to have it.
I then exited the kitchen and trudged upstairs, wondering how I was going to explain myself in the morning. A-ha, they’ve got a pet cat, I thought. I’ll blame him…
My Bakewell-tart binge shocked me into taking action, though – my overeating was getting ridiculous – and within days I’d signed up to Weight Watchers (now WW) online. I was far too busy (and far too ashamed) to attend the group sessions at a local community centre, so the organisation’s recently launched website seemed a more viable option. However, despite sticking rigidly to the programme for a few months – I meticulously planned my meals, and obsessively counted my calories – I only shed a few paltry pounds. For whatever reason, Weight Watchers and I were incompatible.
‘God knows where I’m going wrong,’ I remember lamenting to Siobhan. It was as puzzling as it was dispiriting. *
In February 2001, at the age of 34, I decided to run for a seat in parliament. I had been encouraged to put my name forward by a handful of AEEU members in my prospective constituency, West Bromwich East; evidently they’d been impressed with the work that I’d done on the Rover task force, a government-organised group that had helped to prevent the closure of the Birmingham-based car plant. The prospect of becoming an MP was not a decision I’d taken lightly – I loved my union job, and I also had Siobhan to consider – but in the end it just seemed like the right thing to do. My former mentor, Fraser Kemp, had sensed my anxiety and, over a pint one night, had proffered some words of wisdom. ‘If you want to change things in society and make a difference, Tom, you have to seize every opportunity,’ he’d said. ‘It’s a bit of a leap in the dark, though, mate…’ I’d replied. ‘Maybe it is. But I reckon you should go for it.’
On Thursday 7 June 2001 I was duly elected as an MP, as part of Tony Blair’s second administration, and my whole world changed overnight. While I relished my new life as a politician – it was an absolute honour to represent my constituents, and to serve alongside such luminaries as Dennis Skinner and Margaret Beckett – I found my work schedule immensely challenging.
In order to fulfil my parliamentary and constituency commitments, I spent most weeks shuttling between Westminster and the West Midlands, attending a cavalcade of meetings, briefings, surgeries and conferences.
No day was ever the same, but the vast majority began extremely early and ended very late (occasionally beyond Big Ben’s midnight chimes if there was a vital House of Commons vote). Not only did these long hours and erratic schedules disrupt my sleep patterns and heighten my blood pressure, they also played havoc with my eating habits.
With neither the time to do a weekly shop at the local Tesco, nor the inclination to rustle up a home-cooked meal, the food cupboards in my Bromley flat – which I’d maintained as my London base – remained sparse. The contents of my fridge usually amounted to a packet of roast ham (often past its sell-by date), a litre of full-fat milk and a few cans of Guinness. I always stocked up with breakfast cereals, though – a healthy and nutritious way to start the day, I reckoned – and would habitually grab myself a bowl or two of Kellogg’s Cornflakes or, when I was feeling particularly peckish, a supersized serving of Scott’s Porridge Oats, into which I’d stir a banana and a dessertspoon of honey.
If I was ever pressed for time, though, I’d grab a couple (yes, two) bacon sandwiches in the Commons’ canteen, traditionally referred to by MPs as the ‘Members’ Tea Room’. Comprising thick rashers of bacon, encased in soft, white, buttered bread, these butties were the best I’d ever tasted. A couple of hours later, when my mid-morning hunger pangs inevitably took hold, I’d gladly help myself to the plates of biscuits that were always laid out in meeting rooms in the Commons. More refined colleagues than I might have nibbled at a Hobnob, or munched a couple of Jaffa Cakes, but I’d regularly scoff the whole lot.
I was acutely aware that I was committing a social faux pas – I tried to ignore all the tuts and the raised eyebrows – but, as time went by, I realised that my need for satiation outweighed any sense of decorum.
Lunch in the Tea Room would usually comprise a large portion of pie and mash or, if we had a sitting session on a Friday, a plateful of fish and chips. Whenever the afternoon lethargy set in (much to my shame, I’d sometimes find myself nodding off at my desk) a chunky KitKat usually did the trick, giving me a much-needed sugar hit and acting as a timely, albeit temporary, pick-me-up.
I wonder if other MPs feel as exhausted as I do? I’d ask myself as I aimed the wrapper into the rubbish bin. Then, later in the evening, I’d often avail myself of a takeaway. ‘Hello again, Tom,’ my friendly delivery driver would say with a grin as he handed over my large stuffed-crust Meat Feast, with a side of BBQ chicken wings and the requisite can of pop. If I was ever feeling double-hungry I’d opt for their 2-for-1 deal – treat yourself, Tom, you’ve had a hard day – knowing that I could polish off any leftovers the following morning. An hour later, once the gratification had faded and the fatigue had descended, I’d find myself slumped on the sofa, trying my damnedest to stay awake for Newsnight. Feeling guilty and gluttonous, I’d question my lack of willpower and discipline – why the hell can’t I stop filling my face? – and, by and large, I’d generally reach the same conclusion: here I was, a supposedly intelligent individual (a Member of Parliament, no less) who couldn’t control his own body.
Junk food had me in its thrall. My bulky frame and my hearty appetite soon earned me the nickname of ‘Tommy Two-Dinners’ around the Palace of Westminster. This soubriquet originated from a food- and booze-fest that took place at the legendary Gay Hussar in Soho, a Hungarian restaurant that was favoured by the Left, back in the day when politics (and journalism) was fuelled by mountains of food and rivers of alcohol.
On that particular afternoon I lunched with Guardian journalist Kevin Maguire and Tribune editor Mark Seddon, putting the world to rights and sharing Westminster gossip while we enjoyed a meal of roast duck, washed down with bottles of Merlot. After a couple of hours, Kevin bade us farewell to file an article back in the office, and Mark and I decided to stay in the restaurant and continue through to dinner.
At about five o’clock we both began to flag, so the Gay Hussar’s manager, John Wrobel, allowed us to sneak off for a recuperative nap in the Tom Driberg suite – a private dining room – where he put up two camp beds for us, and folded up tablecloths for us to use as makeshift pillows. After about half an hour he returned to revive us with hot towels and glasses of champagne, and we staggered downstairs for our second sitting of food and drink.
News of our overindulgence soon spread, however. A few days later an item in the Evening Standard appeared, referring to me as ‘Tommy Two-Dinners’, and the nickname duly stuck. ‘Here he comes, Tommy Two-Dinners,’ my fellow MPs would say, sniggering, as I queued up for lunch in the Tea Room. Colleagues constantly ribbed me about my lack of sartorial style, too. For reasons of comfort, I’d often sport a custom-made, baggy black suit teamed up with an untucked shirt and a loosened tie.
Following one particular Commons debate, I was informed by Mark Tami MP – a good friend of mine – that I was ‘the only bloke who could make a five-hundred-quid suit look like a fifty-quid suit.’ The political ‘lobby’ journalists had their own take on my distinctive appearance, too, and would regularly describe me in print as a ‘bruiser’, a ‘fixer’ or a ‘henchman’, portraying me as a straight-talking, hard-nosed nosed tough guy.
While I found this characterisation quite amusing, I also thought it somewhat misplaced; yes, I possessed a rash (and occasionally reckless) streak, and yes, I could occasionally be a bit mouthy, but no more so than most of my Commons colleagues. I certainly didn’t recognise the ‘bovver-boy’ badass featured in their parliamentary profiles and sketches.
The Guardian’s political cartoonist, Steve Bell, did his utmost to perpetuate this image, too, adding to the sense that I was this brutish, thuggish MP. Many politicians found themselves at the rough end of his pen – former prime minister John Major was given a particularly hard time – but his caricatures of yours truly were especially excoriating. He took delight in depicting me as a grotesquely overweight monster, bursting out of my black suit and glowering behind my heavy-rimmed spectacles, more often than not surrounded by disproportionately skinny Labour Party colleagues.
I generally took it in fairly good humour, ever-conscious that a thick skin was compulsory in order to survive in the merciless world of politics. That said, I did find it a bit rich that the satirist himself wasn’t remotely sylphlike. In spite of my health and lifestyle challenges I made decent progress in government – Tony Blair appointed me a government whip in 2004 and, two years later, I was promoted to junior defence minister – and, on the whole, I felt pretty confident and comfortable within the House of Commons environs.
From a professional perspective I tried not to let my weight issues hold me back or curb my ambition and, among colleagues of all ranks, I never allowed myself to feel inferior. At Westminster I’d happily chair meetings and deliver speeches without an iota of inhibition, and at party conferences and rallies I’d invariably be the last man standing, swapping stories with delegates, sharing pints with reporters and belting out the Kaiser Chiefs’ ‘Ruby’ on the karaoke.
There were instances, though, when my weight issues brought about some awkward situations at work, none more so than on my first day at the Ministry of Defence in Whitehall. The maximum-security entrance comprised a tall, glass, cylindrical structure featuring two concave doors. The first door would open in front of you, allowing you to step inside the tube and process your ID, before the second concave door opened, enabling you to walk out and continue into the building. But it didn’t quite happen that way for me. As soon as I entered the tube I set off a piercing alarm, which caused both doors to clamp tightly shut.
I was trapped inside for a few moments, with the sirens still wailing, before a red-faced security guard came over to release the door and free the new minister. Much to my embarrassment, it transpired that the system had detected that two people had entered, not one, and had essentially gone into lockdown (the MOD would later have to reset and reconfigure the system in order to specially accommodate me). I couldn’t have imagined a less auspicious, and more humiliating, start to my new job.
I had also experienced a similarly toe-curling moment when the Labour Party announced its anti-obesity ‘healthy living’ strategy. I was on frontbench duty in the Commons that particular day, sitting beside the comparatively lithe Secretary of State for Health, Alan Johnson, as he outlined our plans to provide overweight people with incentives to change their diet and to participate in exercise. As I squirmed in my seat, blushing profusely, I could see a few Tory MPs nudging each other and smirking in my direction. God knows what those TV viewers tuning in to News at Ten later that evening must have thought.
‘Well, the big fella next to Johnson hasn’t exactly read the brief, has he?’ I imagined Dave from Doncaster sniggering, with good reason.
‘I bet he’s dodged a few salads in his time…’
From that day onward I did my utmost to steer clear of any committees or announcements associated with health or obesity, since my presence within that context was simply farcical.
Once I’d exceeded the twenty-stone mark, my activity levels nosedived. The half-mile walk to my workplace was nigh on impossible – I’d since relocated to a new flat in central London – so most mornings I hailed a cab to the Carriage Gates entrance. So indolent did I feel, however, that I was hardly able to look the driver in the eye as I handed over the minimum fare for this two-minute journey. Upon arrival at the Commons I’d head straight for the lift, because the steep staircase to my office was a complete non-starter (I couldn’t manage the descent, either).
When it came to organising meeting venues – particularly in the afternoon, when my lethargy hit hard – I’d ask my staff to book rooms in Westminster to avoid walking any kind of distance. Indeed, I often found myself trying to duck out of any meetings that were scheduled off-site, even those within a stone’s throw of parliament; if this proved to be unavoidable, I’d have no option but to flag down another taxi, and yet again let the cab take the flab.
Even more troubling for me, however, was the way my obesity affected the quality time I spent at home with my young family. Sadly, Siobhan and I had decided to separate in September 2010 – the aggressive press intrusion during the News International phone-hacking inquiry was partly to blame, prompting my wife to relocate to the Yorkshire Dales – but we remained firm friends and co-parents, happily sharing the care of our son Malachy (born in 2005) and our daughter Saoirse, three years her brother’s junior.
We agreed that I’d look after the children on alternate weekends, in addition to half of the school holidays. Occasionally the kids had no option but to join me on the road, tagging along with me to various political meetings and conferences. I clearly remember Saoirse falling asleep during one of my speeches (‘The Future of the Labour Party’, I seem to recall) although in the circumstances I couldn’t really blame her; it wasn’t the most exciting speech I’d ever delivered.
While I liked to think I was a caring and capable father (aside from the political events, we had lots of fun times together), I was acutely aware that my obesity often held me back. I couldn’t help Malachy hone his football skills, for example, as I didn’t possess the stamina to go in nets or take a corner. I never took Saoirse to the local swimming baths, either, for fear of not being able to complete a length, and because I lacked the confidence to wear trunks in public.
Indoors, there were occasions when I could barely engage my son and daughter in conversation, or read them a bedtime story, because I felt so drained and exhausted. I constantly felt that I was letting my lovely children down – there was a distinct lack of ‘presence’ on my part – and it broke my heart.
‘Why are you falling asleep, Daddy?’ Saoirse would ask, midway through a rendition of our favourite Spike Milligan poem, ‘On The Ning Nang Nong’.
‘I’m just a little bit tired tonight, Sershy-Wershy,’ I’d reply, mustering up a drowsy smile as my daughter’s big blue eyes stared up at me.
So, despite my perpetual fatigue and my mushrooming girth, I spent my entire forties – in fact, I wasted my entire forties – sweeping my health concerns under the carpet. I was caught up in a mire of dread and denial, too embarrassed to discuss my predicament with my loved ones, and too preoccupied to attend ‘well man’ check-ups with my GP. Indeed, I always resisted the temptation to google my symptoms, for fear of what I might discover. Something told me that typing ‘incessant hunger’, ‘morbidly obese’, ‘raging thirst’ and ‘excessive fatigue’ into a search engine would doubtless generate a message to GO DIRECTLY TO DOCTOR, which I simply didn’t have the time or the inclination to do.
Instead, like many middle-aged men before me, I effectively ignored the warnings, donned the blinkers and hoped that my ailments would simply fade away. Even in February 2013, when Dr Nazeer finally diagnosed me with type 2 diabetes, I spent the ensuing three months purposely concealing my illness from my family. I was loath to cause them any upset or alarm – especially my children and my parents – and I was also racked with shame and embarrassment. The way I viewed it, my poor lifestyle choices had got me into this unholy mess, and my failure to act on the omens and flag up my symptoms had been foolhardy in the extreme. It was my fault, and my fault only, that I had jeopardised my long-term health.
There was still a huge amount of disbelief on my part, too; the prospect of lifelong diabetes was so scary and unfathomable that I could hardly bear to contemplate it myself, let alone talk it through with others.
Eventually I’d drum up the courage to speak with my family and friends – cue a succession of frank and honest conversations – and, to a man and woman, they couldn’t have been more supportive. My sister Meg, a qualified nurse, was particularly sensitive to my issues, and was keen to nudge me in the right direction.
‘Without wanting to frighten you, Tom, you really do need to get this under control. It’s such a serious condition. Listen to your doctor, of course, but you always know where I am if you need me.’
‘Cheers, sis, I appreciate that…’
Afraid that my illness might be perceived as a weakness in the Commons bear pit, I initially kept my Westminster colleagues out of the loop, too. Throughout 2013 and 2014 I never breathed a word to a single soul; but, as it turned out, it was through my own carelessness that I was eventually rumbled.
‘Here, you left these on your desk,’ whispered my office manager, Karie Murphy, one morning, as she handed me a foil strip of metformin while I turned a deeper shade of puce. Being a former nurse herself, my colleague recognised my medication and understood its significance. ‘
To be fair, Tom, I’ve been worried about you for a while,’ she said, ‘but I didn’t think it was my place to pry. I’m so glad you’re addressing things, though. Time to keep off those chocolate Hobnobs, eh?’
2015 proved to be extremely gruelling, work-wise. The springtime general election campaign, with Labour challenger Ed Miliband contesting Tory leader David Cameron, saw me visiting over one hundred constituencies up and down the UK. My public profile had risen in the wake of the phone-hacking inquiry, and as such I was asked to coordinate so-called ‘member mobilisation’ (drumming up support, basically) in key parliamentary seats that Labour had to win or defend. On average, I’d visit four or five constituencies per day, adhering to a punishing schedule that saw me delivering town centre speeches, giving media interviews, posing for photos with Labour candidates and knocking on doors to canvass voters.
I was often assisted by a team of local activists and, on occasion, by a left-leaning celebrity; the comedian Eddie Izzard, whom I admired very much, lent his support in a number of constituencies, including Amber Valley and Northampton North.
All this to-ing and fro-ing was no good for my health and well-being, though, and for five weeks my diet largely comprised full English breakfasts in hotels, and takeaway burgers in cars. Things would only get busier. The following September, having attended a string of hustings from Brighton in the south to Edinburgh in the north, I was elected deputy leader of the Labour Party – succeeding Harriet Harman – on the same day that Jeremy Corbyn was chosen to replace Ed Miliband at the helm.
‘It’s my role to unify the party, hold things together and make it work in difficult times,’ was my message to those who’d voted me in.
Amid all this politicking I continued to have regular diabetes check-ups and, having been referred by Dr Nazeer, also managed to squeeze in an appointment with an NHS nutritionist in central London. It proved to be one of the most humiliating half-hours of my life. As I sat in her consultation room, she quizzed me about my food and drink intake – I gave her an honest summary of my daily excesses – before introducing me to the Department of Health’s ‘Eatwell Plate’. This laminated pie chart, divided into colour-coded segments, illustrated the government’s official recommendations in relation to a wholesome, balanced diet.
‘Now this is probably the best way to explain it to you,’ she said, a little condescendingly, before placing a large red plate on her desk. Upon it lay various shiny, plastic foodstuffs, including a chicken drumstick, a cheese wedge, a bread roll, a carrot and a pineapple. The kind that Malachy and Saoirse had once pretended to cook on the hob of their Toys R Us kiddies’ kitchen.
The nutritionist explained that the Eatwell guidelines endorsed a healthy and varied diet that included five portions of fruit and vegetables a day, with a meal plan based around starchy carbohydrates like potato, bread, rice or pasta. Fat, especially saturated fat, should be reduced – it raised cholesterol, apparently, which could increase the risk of heart disease – and foods high in sugar were to be restricted, too.
As she outlined each segment, she pointed to the corresponding toy (‘bread for carbohydrate… chicken for protein… pineapple for fruit…’) and a little part of me curled up and died. Here I was, Tom Watson, Member of Parliament, deputy leader of the Labour Party, ardent campaigner for justice, being made to feel like I was appearing on some mid-morning CBeebies show. With typical British propriety, though, I just smiled, nodded and – once the consultation ended – thanked her kindly for all her help and guidance.
How on earth has it come to this? I said to myself as I traipsed out of the clinic, consumed with self-pity.
The next instalment from Downsizing will be shared next Wednesday. Missed the previous chapters? Find the links below
Thanks for sending that Tom. I look at this from the perspective of a nutritionist and think, well after 3 babies (and sadly 2 miscarriages) I definitely need to loose weight! It's not easy it is it x