Why do so many people persist in misunderstanding the valuable work of Daily Mail Fat Fighters? It is, of course, the unofficial club that helps female celebrities by publishing snatched photos of them looking vaguely overweight, and then running remorselessly supportive commentary until they either come to heel and develop an eating disorder, or resign themselves to a lifetime of reading headlines like the following, which once sat atop a picture of Patsy Kensit looking slightly larger than when she only ingested nasally:
"FROM MANEATER TO MATRON: No longer pursued by men, no more the toast of the town, even TV roles are drying up for Patsy, single mum and very much alone ..."
She was 35 at the time.
The latest to reject the newspaper's concerned friendship is Elvis Presley's daughter Lisa Marie, snapped only last week having lunch in Los Angeles, and rushed into the Daily Mail's nutritionary equivalent of A&E in a piece entitled "LISA MARIE IS GROWING JUST LIKE HER DAD". "Her father fought - and lost - a long and very public battle with the bulge," began this article. "Now Elvis Presley's daughter Lisa Marie appears to have developed a similarly unhealthy appetite."
But wait! It turns out Lisa Marie ISN'T about to die on the loo with a nappy round her ankles, whilst the peanut butter, jelly and bacon of her last, half-eaten Fool's Gold Loaf pools out slowly across the bathroom floor.
Instead, she has an alternative explanation for her terrifying lurch up a single dress size - and she's mad as hell.
"I have had to show my cards and announce under the gun and under vicious personal attack that I am in fact pregnant," Lisa Marie writes on her MySpace page, in a posting in which she calls the press "disgusting". "Once they got a glimpse of my expanding physique a few days ago, they have been like a pack of coyotes circling their prey whilst eerily howling with delight."
And not content with that, Lisa Marie has decided to sue the Daily Mail for "false, defamatory, and degrading stories".
Admittedly, in calling out the paper for a practice which has become such second nature to them that she may as well be suggesting they stop running the football results, Lisa Marie could be opening a can of protein-rich worms that she will end up being force-fed one by one. But for now, let's wish her all the best in this noble struggle - and indeed in any future one to lose the baby weight, which will now be documented by the paper in relentless, forensic, real-time detail.
