Anyway, Smith’s love handles caused absolute mayhem in the US tabloid press.

“I’m gonna be real wit y’all — I’m in the worst shape of my life,” he posted. “This is the body that carried me through an entire pandemic and countless days grazing thru the pantry. I love this body, but I wanna FEEL better. No more midnight muffins… this is it!”

Smith is now teaming up with YouTube to document his weight loss. Seriously, you don’t think he did it for any other reason than stone-cold publicity?

Fair play to Smith for alluding to having entirely normal feelings and reactions to the pandemic, but still. There’s nothing more boring than watching the overpaid, the over-staffed and the over-privileged get into the best shape of their life.

In the same week, Mark Wahlberg was also photographed sans his trademark six-pack. This time, however, he revealed that he has put on 20 pounds for his role in a new film, Stu.

He’s not the first actor to change his body type for The Art, but you might notice a difference between what happens when a male actor puts on weight citing professional reasons, and when a female actor does it.

The former is an artistic visionary entirely dedicated to his craft; the latter will find that her body shape will be written about, ahead of her professional prowess, for ever more.

The celebration of the Dad Bod is yet more evidence of Hollywood’s maddening double standards. A Dad Bod, a quick Google search confirms, is simply the midway point between a muscular and an overweight physique, or what the rest of the world might call ‘entirely normal’.

You’ll find no shortage of articles celebrating actors who ‘rock’ this body shape, seen on Ben Affleck, Chris Pratt, Will Ferrell, Pierce Brosnan and Jack Black. “Dad bods are currently trending and women can’t help but drool over the new fad,” one article enthuses.

InStyle magazine goes on to rhapsodise: “Forget the shirtless man with washboard abs flexing — we much prefer a softer physique. A dad bod doesn’t care about hitting the gym morning and night; he would much rather order pizza. (Our kind of guy.)”

It wouldn’t be so utterly sick-making if women who did the exact same (that is, forego the gym and order pizza) weren’t written about as though they are breaking an unspoken social and moral contract.

Where is the concern trolling for Wahlberg? How come no-one is wagging a finger in Smith’s face about Type 2 diabetes?

Dad Bods are aspirational, cuddly and sexily ‘soft’. Mom Bods, meanwhile, are often described as lazy and dysfunctional, and have absolutely zero cachet, and much less currency.

You might also recall that Billie Eilish was photographed this week for Vogue looking like a ’40s sex goddess. The pictures of the 19-year-old, usually seen in oversized, baggy tracksuits, were eye-poppingly glamorous.

Yet much of the discussion around these beautiful photos was about the singer being ‘curvy’ and ‘mid-sized’.

I looked at these photos, and looked some more. I really, truly pored over them to find the ‘mid-sized’ woman everyone was talking about. Maybe I’ve been hitting the midnight muffins a bit too hard myself, but all I saw was a thin, shapely woman.

 

Do we have to go back there? To the point where Renee Zellweger and Kate Winslet — both healthy size 10s back in the 2000s — were considered ‘big’?

What does this do to our relationships with our bodies? More crucially, what will this do to the young fans of Billie Eilish, and their thoughts on their bodies?

There has been much talk about how the Dad Bod is a shot in the arm for body positivity. But you know what would really work? Not giving a fig about what’s happening with anyone else’s body size, whether they’ve been beating into the midnight muffins or not.

Fawning William and Kate coverage suggests Harry and Meghan were right about ‘The Firm’ hand on the media tiller

During their infamous sit-down with Oprah, Prince Harry and Meghan lifted the lid on the weirdly symbiotic relationship between the press and the British royal family.

In what has been touted as an ‘invisible contract’, Harry mentioned a scenario in which orchestrated public exposure is offered, and a level of scrutiny traditionally accepted, in return for privacy behind palace gates.

Harry intimated that the royal family have a much closer relationship with the inner workings of the media than first imagined, with members of The Firm allegedly “wining and dining” the press to curry favourable coverage.

“I’m acutely aware of where my family stand and how acutely scared they are of the tabloids turning on them,” Harry revealed.

I thought of all this last week as the British media fairly frothed at the mouth while describing a video that Prince William and Kate released to mark the couple’s 10th anniversary.

According to one report, “fans” were left “in tears” by the “adorable” montage; another report observed that “courtiers who sneered about Waity Katie are the ones bowing lowest”.

Impeccably polished, steely, stunning: there isn’t a slobbering superlative that hasn’t been thrown at Kate Middleton of late that doesn’t feed into the ‘future of the monarchy’ line that the royals are desperate to uphold.

I mean, you couldn’t get better press if you were actually writing the stuff yourself. Sort of makes you think, right?

Stop right now: the Spice sequel the world really doesn't need

In this week’s ‘things the world absolutely does not need or want’ section, we welcome the Spice Girls, who have reportedly approached a screenwriter to pen a sequel to their 1997 film Spice World.

Which would be fine and all, if Spice World wasn’t the biggest waste of a film crew since the doomed production of Heaven’s Gate.

I admire the Spice Girls’ collective tenacity, and their dedication to dead-horse-flogging.

But surely even they know that a sequel to Spice World would be a crime against celluloid? Or, well, humanity itself?