Boris Johnson's personal trainer's fitness diary

AS personal trainer to the prime minister, I’m painstakingly logging his journey from obesity to good health. Here’s the story so far: 

Day one: Boris tells me he has already lost 69 pounds and plans to lose a further 100. According to the scales he’s lost 16 pounds and needs to lose a further 150. He says yes, that’s what he said. 

Day six: Boris tells me unfortunately he’s unable to do any exercise today because he’s working flat-out for the people of Britain. I tell him to do sit-ups. He tells me every sit-up he does counts as 10. 

Day 12: Boris really steps up and does an incredibly tough workout without complaint, running all distances, performing all exercises, pushing himself to the absolute max. Then the photographers leave and he sits down panting and tells me to be a good boy and f**k off. 

Day 15: Boris tells me he’s already done all the exercises before I arrived so doesn’t have to. I point out he’s not sweating and has just eaten a bun. He promises to do all 160 sit-ups in the last three minutes before the end of the session. 

Day 22: I meet Boris at a new location he calls his ‘training centre’, the flat of a young aspiring model I worked with last year. He exits rumpled and flushed and claims to have just done ‘15 minutes of press-ups’. 

Day 34: Boris announces he has reached his target weight. I explain he has actually put on six pounds in the last week and is doing no exercise. He calls me a ‘doomster and what’s more, a gloomster who is doing this country down’. 

Day 35: Arrive for work. Police won’t let me into Downing Street. They tell me the prime minister has a new personal trainer. I peer through the railings and see it’s Baroness Dido Harding, chair of the new National Institute for Health Protection and former chief executive of TalkTalk.

Five excellent films to ruin with a shit prequel

A MAD Max prequel is in the pipeline, which may ruin everyone’s memories of the earlier films by being shit. Here are some more classics to f**k up.

Jaws 

‘What happened when Jaws was a baby shark?’ is a question no one has ever asked. A prequel could feature a cute little 12-inch Jaws learning the ways of the ocean. Basically anything that completely ruins the menace of the actual Jaws. Maybe Jaws could be friends with a crab?

Toy Story 

The events of Toy Story are very clear, so it doesn’t need a prequel, but then neither did Alien or all the other films bollocksed up with one. The early life of toys is a bit limited, so the entire film would be about talking pieces of plastic waiting to be moulded into Woody, Buzz and all the characters we love.

Withnail and I

Funny and moving with memorable characters, Withnail and I could be completely ruined forever by showing the jaded thespians years earlier as optimistic and supremely annoying drama school pricks. 

The Long Good Friday

Classic Brit thriller about gangster Harold Shand’s hellish Easter weekend. But what were Harold and wife Victoria doing earlier in the week? A prequel could focus on them sorting out nibbles for the party on their yacht, then end unsatisfyingly as the IRA start blowing people up.

Back to the Future

Okay, the sequels are also sort of the prequels, but that’s what happens when you mess with time travel. For simplicity this would tell the story of Marty’s teenage life: driving his parents to distraction practising Van Halen riffs, demanding a car, and non-stop wanking.