“Slow down,” begins Robert, “that’s a lot of questions. Yeah, I’m fat and I like it - I put on a lot more than just a ‘freshman 15' last year. When I was a kid, my mum would even put me on diets - they didn’t work, in between I ballooned - so being away from home last year I deliberately decided to really gain weight. Lots and lots of weight.

“I mean, if I’m going to be fat - and I’ve always known I was going to be fat, I’ve never been anything else - then I’m going to REALLY be fat, no fooling around. This,” he paused and stroked his massive paunch with one fattened hand, “is the result of realising some of my personal potential. I worked hard on developing my body last year, eating and packing on the kind of weight I always knew I was meant to have.

“If you’re looking at it conventionally, by the ‘freshman 15' standard, - well, I blew so far past that measure that there’s no comparison, really. This,” Robert continued, his hand caressing his gut again “is the proof of all my hard work. If you have to, you might call it my...