Weight Watchers: No Biscuits for Bonzo.

I went on Tuesday. It's a tin-shack of a hall, with no visible insulation or heating. The roof appears to be made of corrugated plastic and the noise of the rain drowns out any chance of talking. My leader is a scary woman called Liz. She looks like she's had all the flesh sucked off her bones, leaving wrinkly skin and a sharp demeanour. I handed in my vouchers and tried to look invisible.

I sat on a plastic chair at the front and waited for the other ladies and gentlemen to queue up. You get weighed and pay for the session first. It took a long time. There were about 3 women for every one man. Every age group was there, from young mums to pensioners. I was relieved to see I was about in the middle for both age and weight. There were fatter and slimmer people there.

Liz gave me the drill, which is basically: work out what each food is worth in 'points' using an incomprehensible scale, and then make sure you don't eat more than 23 of them in a day. Neither of these things is very easy. I sunk further into my chair as the main talk of the evening begun.

We applauded people who had lost weight and no-body admitted to having put any on. Someone lost half a stone in their first week! They must have had lead-lined boots on last week. I wish I'd though of that. Anyway, there seemed to be some camaraderie between the dieters, and I did smile at a few comments. Maybe it will be OK.

Well, I've spent 4 days trying to stick to the points. It is not all that easy. Firstly I don't know how much anything weighs, or how many points it has.

Secondly, even if I can work it out, it seems to have way too many, meaning I get to eat a mushroom and a bowl of cornflakes in a day, rather than a sensible amount of food. I am absolutely convinced that no ordinary human survives on this little food.

Thirdly, their list of 'pointed' recipes have a whole load of ingredients in them that I never normally keep in the house. This means serious organisation on my behalf (something I'm not all that good at when it comes to shopping and cooking), and buying weird stuff I don't know if I like, and I'm pretty certain the kids wont eat.

Fourthly, I still need to be constantly vigilant about what goes in my mouth, because it is still way to easy to slip in a biscuit, especially when you are ravenous, and there just isn't enough lee-way in the points to allow any biscuit-slipping.

The jury is still out on this experiment.