Where Have I Gone?

Pauline Quirke is a successful TV star and a happily married mum of two. She is also FAT. Not big-boned, not curvy, not slightly overweight for complicated health reasons involving something official sounding like an overactive gland. A self-confessed glutton, she has spent her whole life overindulging in delicious food and drink and it has finally caught up with her. At twenty stone she has had a disc removed, a fractured ankle that refuses to heal because of the weight it carries, and gestational diabetes. Her weight is ruining her health, and something must be done. Not Another Diet book really isn't another diet book. Instead it is a laugh-out-loud-funny account of Pauline's year of striving to lose weight while working eighty-hour weeks on the set of Emmerdale. We see Pauline struggle to keep up with her personal trainer ('I spent a blissful hour trotting alongside a small waif-like creature believing that passers by would think my friend and I were out for a run. Sadly I hadn't realised that she had the words PERSONAL TRAINER emblazoned across her back'), we follow her as she starts work on Emmerdale - a soap that's filmed hundreds of miles from her home town and has an onscreen canteen filled with temptation, and we witness her quest to enlist the help of the UK's top chefs to help her meet her challenge ('Dear Heston. Our kids go to the same school so we're practically related. Please can you devise for me a low-calorie chocolate mousse that's still chocolaty and creamy and gorgeous? Thanks!') Not Another Diet Book is packed with healthy hints and fat facts, plus photographic evidence of Pauline's shrinking waistline and hilarious stories that outline why fat is not really very fun. It is also a heartwarming peep into the life of one of the nation's favourite soap stars...