Anti-Fat

Fat is a strange thing. It is one of the worst enemies of our health in the West today. Heck, when it comes down to basics we don’t like what it does to our looks.

Which is where I came in.

My name is Jack Chapman. I used to do everything I could to avoid work. That meant ducking and diving and dealing to exploit the system. The system was ripe for it.

When my last little con involving forged bus passes went wrong I ended up with six months in pokey and a confiscated bank account. I got out in three months and the term was served in one of the cushiest open prisons I’ve ever known.

Anyway, I was walking down the High Street, when I heard music floating through the doors of an old church hall. I was trying hard to think about my options, which to be honest weren’t many and this was a welcome distraction. So I peeked in.

They say fortune favours the brave, my thought is it favours the nosy.

A bunch of middle-aged woman and one poor man at the back, were bending and stretching to some cheerful, cheesy music.

It was a weight control class. I only managed to look at this entertaining spectacle for a minute or two, before I was ushered out by a matron of about fifty woo seemed to take exception to my leering at her class as she put it, although my feeling is if I want to see hippos I’ll go to the zoo.

As I made a quick retreat I nearly knocked over a table covered in items for sale. They were all products for making you lose weight.

That was when it struck me.

The new scam.

I had a shitload of printing equipment in my flat. I knew guys who were bale to get me anything I wanted. And that, my friends, was when I went into the diet business.

You see, a successful con needs needs two things: a product or idea and a willing suspension of belief on behalf of the mug. Sorry, customer.

Half of it is a promise so good the punter can’t turn it away, and the rest is down to marketing.

I spent that night designing a label. When I say a label I mean something that looked so good even I believed my product was real. It was in blue, with a graphic of rounded water droplets and white letter that said; ‘U-Slim’ and red letters in tiny print telling you to take the tablets three times a day with a full glass of water.

The next day I contacted my pal, who was bemused to find me prdering six hundred pill boxes and approximately 36000 pills. The pills were a mild concotion made of dried rhubarb covered in a blue sugar food colouring to match the label.

He thought I was mad. I did myself but I figured that the cost – a couple of hundred quid – was worth the risk

When the pills arrived I sealed up 100 boxes and set up some young relatives to work packaging the rest then I went out on the prowl.

The secret of the con is to be totally convinced that your product is wanted by eager millions.

Suited and booted in my best clobber I went to see over fifty diet instructors, fitness gurus and health food suppliers, getting plenty of orders on the way. I also took out a direct advert in the local paper.

No cash down of course – and the bills wouldn’t be paid if I failed. Even the company supplying the pills had to bill me, which was lucky, because my total assets amounted to a flat, a bed and the clothes in which I stood. Look all right, you’ll be all right.

Another trick I managed to pull off was in the supermarkets. A bit of headed paper from ‘head office’ made me able to set up girls, pills and table displays in about twenty. The girls were working on commission of course, selling the new, miracle drug U-Slim.

My marketing ploys worked. My useless pills sold out within the week. Even after expenses (which I sensibly doled out in part payments) I had enough money left to order my raw ingrediants and keep me well-off for weeks to come.

You can do that when you charge £10.00 for sixty tablets.

I had to put in a huge bulk order and take on full-time packagers. It got to the point where I couldn’t get my tablets to the shelves. The in-store promotion meant that I had to work like a blue-arsed fly delivering extra boxes during the day because customers were baying for more.

But he making of U-Slim was my exposure on television. I was shown to be a clever marketing man by ‘Watchdog.’ I slapped an injunction on them so they couldn’t go over my past but a sanctimonious shite stood there and revealed everything about my pills including the fact that they were medically ineffective.

Even the pet doctor they called in to slag me off had to admit my pills were harmless enough, just rubbish. So I cheekily took out adverts ‘as featured on BBC TV’ and started a national campaign.

The results were astounding. Not only did the nation respond by purchasing more tablets tan ever, after six months I was a millionaire.

But then worrying reports began to reach my ears.

It worked.

Yes, you heard me right. Scientists have told me I accidentally stumbled on a food colourant that reacted aerobically with the combination of rhubarb and the glass of water people took with the pill to burn off fat and make the patient lose weight.

So what happens now?

I’m being investigated by everyone from the food standards agency to the BMA to the Daily Mail.

Never mind injunctions, they’ll find out about my dodgy past and crucify me in public.

HELP.