The thin end of the wedge for a comedian with a passion for food

Arabella Weir describes herself as “someone who cannot be left unsupervised in a room with a packet of chocolate biscuits”.

In her new one-woman show, The Real Me Is Thin, coming to Halifax at the weekend, the comedian, actress and writer gives a startlingly frank account, of her own eating problems.

It may be a humorous appraisal of our attitudes towards eating disorders and obesity, but it carries a serious message about how parents’ attitude to food and eating effect their children.

Arabella clearly blames her parents for her own neurotic relationship with food.

From the age of nine, when she started to put on weight, they banned her from eating potatoes.

“I was made to feel if I was thin they would love me more,” says Arabella.

“It didn’t seem to matter what my brothers looked like, but, above all, they wanted me to be thin and pretty. Winners don’t have fat kids.

“And what was more confusing was being told that I was doing it on purpose to annoy them. I was eight or nine and I just didn’t understand what was going on. I could have understood it more if I was obese, but I wasn’t.”

As a result, she would associate being thin with love, causing an unhealthy relationship with food, which continues today.

“As soon as someone tells you you can’t have something, you want it all the more.”

From prolonged abstinence to binge eating, she recalls a childhood besieged with battles over food. Subjected to her mother’s erratic and sometimes brutal feeding regime, and taught early on that food was her enemy, happiness meant being allowed to eat what she liked – or, more importantly, what everyone else was eating.

She recounts stories of unhinged mothers and callous doctors, mystery-meat suppers, and egg custard battles with boyfriends’ mothers, vividly recreating a childhood and adolescence marred by the social embarrassment of being marked as different simply because of her weight.

“When you go through a childhood like that and then even when you go out into the world society confirms the fact that you have to be thin to be successful it exacerbates the feelings.”

Arabella, now 53, deals with these issues through comedy and confession first in her book, Does My Bum Look Big In This?, and now her one-woman show.

“It is just my style and I do find it cathartic. If people don’t like it, then they don’t have to listen to me. But there are a lot of women out there who have gone through similar things to me and might find it helpful to know they are not on their own.”

Her parents’ attitude towards her and food has made Arabella much more conscious about how she deals with her children.

But she is more than aware that it is harder than ever to foster a stress-free approach to eating.

“We are told that we need to be a size zero and yet cook meals like Nigella and Jamie.

“With my children, now 13 and 11, I adopt a no-value approach to food. No one food is better or worse than another. I tell them to eat broccoli because it is full of nutrients, and I avoid saying anything negative when they ask for more ice cream and chocolates.

“We try to adopt an ‘everything in moderation’ approach and they seem pretty relaxed about food.”

Arabella says she has learnt to be happy with the way she looks, although she knows she will never completely get over her hang-up with food.

“I have just been for a big lunch, and my first thought is that I will need to skip supper. But if you eat healthily and exercise a bit then try to be happy with the way you are, you are never going to be a size zero.”

Dr Jacquie Lavin, a nutritionist from Sheffield who now works for Slimming World says: “Parents have to be role models for their children. Don’t put anything off limits, but place boundaries or else you just make it more attractive.”

And Louise McManus, a family eating adviser, from Harrogate, says: “Parental attitudes to food are very important: a number of studies have shown that what parents eat is the best predictor of what a child will eat.

“Conversely, poor eating habits in obese children are tackled best by a ‘whole family’ approach, rather than just by trying to make the child eat more healthily. Basically, if you eat healthily, so will your children.”