I am writing this from the Welsh border town of Hay-on-Wye, here for what is billed as one of Britain’s premier book festivals.

But when I scan the heavy program there seems to be some serious omissions. If this is the top dog book festival, where are all the authors with diet books to promote?

Books about fitting into a bikini in 12 weeks consistently top the best seller list yet their names don’t appear. And where all nutritionists promoting their low GI diet books? That diet is like, so hot right now.

Martin Bloody Amis - what does he know about calorie controlled diets? It’s all gulags and terrorists with him.

And what about Kenyan Nobel Peace Laureate Wangari Maathai? Sure she’s done a lot for African development but can she run a half-marathon?

The dearth of health related writing at this festival is obviously not a priority for anyone here.
The festival goers are a pallid lot.

I’ve observed them for four days now. They move from tent to tent at the pace of ewes. They drink cappuccinos whilst reading newspapers. In the afternoon they switch to Pimms and signed volumes of poetry. They are fond of shawls.

On sunny days, they sit in tents that double as lecture theatres and talk about the erosion of civil liberties in the wake of new anti-terror laws. But what about the place of carbohydrates in the modern British diet, I feel like screaming at them. Forget powers of political resistance! What about hot chip resistance?!

No wonder there is an obesity epidemic in Britain. Here are some of the country's greatest thinkers (all penned neatly into one Welsh field) and yet they are not being asked any health related questions. All anyone seems to care about here is the war in Iraq and use of the third person plural as a viable narrative voice.

I decide to take action and ask health related questions from the floor, thereby getting diet and ‘lifestyle’ issues back on the agenda.

I sit up the back of Derek Walcott’s lecture. He is a Nobel Laureate whose Odyssey version of Omeros is hailed as one of the great poems of the twentieth century. He looks quite good for his age. "Mr Walcott - what’s your skin care regime? Do you support facials for men…. mencials I think they are called in some parts of west London. Do you ever think the current gross beauty trend of colonic irrigation will make it into any of poems? And finally, Wordsworth in his poems celebrated the countryside. Why have we never spawned a great poet of the gym? Why are there no lyrics eulogizing the treadmill?"

To Mr Amis; "How do you stay so lean and avoid middle aged spread? Is it because writing about gulags makes you lose your appetite?"

To Marina Lewycka, "You’ve written about Ukrainian tractors and caravans. But what are your views of on the Ukrainian cabbage diet?

To Thomas Keneally, "In your book, the Great Shame, you write about the Irish potato famine. What lessons can we learn today about losing weight the Irish way?"

Actually I didn’t ask any of those questions. There is always some nerdy type on the front row (usually wearing a shawl) wanting to talk about the book.

Boo - I say. Books are making us fat. If we are going to read them they should impart useful things like how to live on a raw food diet and ‘Two weeks to a flat stomach!’

Labels: diet books, Hay-on-Wye, Martin Amis