Puking Prescott

It's all very courageous that the former Deputy PM has admitted that he had bulimia, and it might go some way to explaining the £4000 a year food bill at his Admiralty Arch apartment, but I can't help thinking that he was misdiagnosed.

I think he was certainly au fait with the stuffing his face side of things, but not so good on the whole throwing it back up again. 16 1/2 stone is rather heavy and to be honest, the fact that no one realised makes it highly unlikely that he was doing it frequently. I lost loads of weight when I was quite badly bulimic but I was in an office on my own which had a bathroom attached and I was living on my own too. No one knew how often I was being sick, how much time I went in there and didn't see my red, blotchy face and piggy eyes when I came out. Because that's what happens if you are bulimic and you do throw up everything you've eaten.

I just don't see how someone surrounded by people, always at lunches and dinners could manage to get away with such an illness with no-one knowing.

And also the sheer size of him makes me think he wasn't throwing up often, the key point of bulimia, or he would have been smaller. I lost a couple of stone in about a month when I was at my worst, i.e throwing up every meal even if I only ate salad, and anything I may have eaten in between. I could smoke in my office, it was a lot easier back then!