Jayne Dowle: Georgie porgie, full of pudding and pie, went on a diet and made me cry

George Osborne only has to stand up to make a point of order and show us his belt straining at his waist. While the rest of Britain forages around in the supermarket, pouncing on the end-of-the-day discounts, clearly this privileged member of the political classes has been feeding his face.

Like Nigel Lawson before him, he’s hung around with fat-cat bankers for so long that he’s in danger of turning into one.

At the age of 42, all those years of good lunches and all those hours on his bottom in the House of Commons are beginning to tell.

According to reports, he’s put himself on the 5:2 diet. For the uninitiated, this involves eating for five days a week and fasting on minimum calorific intake for the other two.

At last the rather grand Mr Osborne has found something in common with the rest of us. There are plenty of people on low wages who follow a similar plan. I know quite a few mothers struggling to make ends meet who forgo a proper meal every day so they can afford to put food on the table for their children.

The irony of the Chancellor finding himself with the luxury of making the decision not to eat will not be lost on them. Or on any of us for that matter. Remember when he was famously pictured feasting on a Byron “gourmet burger”, as he prepared his Budget speech last year? The reported cost, £7.95, is roughly in the ball-park of my daily budget for the meal I put on the table every evening to feed a family of four.

Apparently, his determination to lose weight is part of a concerted image drive not entirely unconnected with rumours that he is keen to succeed David Cameron as party leader. This also involves a hair makeover. Osborne has had his foppish posh boy locks trimmed into what’s known as “a Caesar cut”, after the Roman emperor. I remember Tony Blair doing something similar. I also remember realising, not without alarm, that Tony Blair had started plucking his eyebrows. And wearing a bit of concealer under his eyes. And possibly even a smidgeon of eyeliner, just for special television appearances you understand.

Politicians are not known for being a handsome bunch. However, some of them have the sense to accept what nature dealt them and not nancy around with fancy diets and cosmetics.

No -one wants to see a huge and hypocritical MP lecturing us about the dangers of obesity and the benefits of healthy eating.

At the same time though, no -one wants to witness the trials and tribulations of a politician on a diet. If I’m after that kind of thing, I’ll go on Facebook, where any number of my friends will be sharing their daily calorie intake and grams of fat burned on the treadmill. If I’m not interested in their “diet journey”, I’m certainly not interested in George Osborne’s. Let him get on with it quietly, and jog around Dorneywood at the weekend in private.

I don’t know about you, but I prefer my male politicians unadorned and unvarnished. When I see Nigel Farage in one of those pinstripe suits with the wide lapels, I can’t help but think of a spiv in an Ealing Comedy. I mean, this is a man who tried to instil a “national dress code” in a bid to raise sartorial standards.

Politicians should leave that kind of thing to the catwalk and get on with the business of politics. I realise this might sound slightly weird, but I’d rather see Dennis Skinner any day. With his craggy features and windswept hair, he always looks as if he’s just got in from an invigorating hike across Derbyshire. Much better than looking as if he’s just stepped out of a salon.

Too much attention to public image suggests that the attention is wandering elsewhere. It also implies a degree of vanity and self-obsession, which is never nice in any man. I don’t want to look at David Cameron and immediately wonder if he is colouring his hair. If the rumours are true, when does he find time to do it? I can’t see him hopping round the Downing Street bathroom in a towel with a bottle of Grecian 2000 on his head. Surely it’s better to let nature take its course and emulate the example of former US president Bill Clinton, who is now a proper silver fox.

Clinton’s mature looks certainly don’t seem to have curtailed his appeal with the ladies. If anything, they give him that extra air of authority and, ahem, power. And there is something endearing about his own struggles to slim down. A man who can’t help but cave in to a weakness for ice cream and home cooking proves he is human.

A man who chooses to eat for only five days out of seven? You can only wonder.