CHARLES HUTCHINSON reveals how he has been fighting the flab for years with support from his local slimming club.

FAT Friends, a new drama about the thick-and-thin experiences of members of a Yorkshire slimming club, opens on ITV on Thursday for a six-week run. Time enough to lose a mountain of weight, if you stick to the latest dieting fad. Fat Friends is the latest ensemble piece by Leeds playwright, screenwriter and director Kay Mellor, whose down-to-earth television triumphs include Band Of Gold and Playing The Field.

Kay's daughter Gaynor Faye, Alison Steadman, Ruth Jones and Josie Lawrence lead the cast in a typically northern tale of feisty women and feeble men, set in Kay's home city, with guest appearances by Richard Madeley, Judy Finnegan, Richard Whiteley and Eleanor Bron.

"Nobody hangs out washing any more. Men don't do manual jobs. Children are driven to school," Kay notes.

"Yet everyone wants to be thin, because thinness is associated with success, whereas if you're big, you seem less in control of your life, which is daft of course."

Daft as that perception may seem to Kay Mellor, it is a prejudice that has long thrived and not without reason.

Take success out of the equation, and it is still true that being overweight hinders being in control of your daily life.

And I should know; I've been a member of the Knaresborough branch of Slimming World on and off - like my fluctuating weight - for several years. Plenty of sleep and plenty of walks help but nothing works better for health than steady weight loss.

Yet I don't want to paint a picture of fat is a crime, slim is sublime. Indeed Slimming World makes a point of referring to 'losing weight' rather than dieting, putting a positive spin on the objective.

In all the time I have been attending the Wednesday sessions, the most constant sound I have heard has been laughter (along with the hand clapping and cheers that accompany the announcement of weight loss).

There is a spirit of clubbing together, a common purpose, and rather than everyone wanting to be thin, everyone would settle for being thinner.

Of course, fear plays its part: fear of not losing weight each time you go on the scales and, initially, fear of thinking other people will be looking at you.

Words of encouragement and advice, and indeed a supportive phone call during the week, have always compensated any feeling of deflation at the scales refusing to go downwards.

Likewise, all shapes and sizes come to class - and the only ones to receive a close look are the slim ones, who have you wondering why they are there.

Fat Friends would have you believe slimming clubs are peopled by "feisty women and feeble men".

That of course is a dramatic device, a comic convention to be found in Carry On movies, The Good Life, George And Mildred, Last Of The Summer Wine etc etc.

Feisty women women attend, from brides-to-be to girls looking to shape up for a Mediterranean holiday, from middle-aged mums to grannies.

As for feeble men...I haven't dared ask any of the women what they think of me, but men have been thin on the ground at class and, believe me, you are anything but feeble when boldly going where so few men have been before.

Making that initial step of attending class for the first time is the bravest you will ever need to be.

From there on, the slimming club is a support system far better for you than a girdle.

Fat Friends, Kay Mellor's new six-part drama series on ITV, begins on Thursday.