Macho Diets: From Lord Falconer's Diet Coke and Apples to Charles Saatchi's Nine Eggs a Day

Falconer's five-stone weight loss is the latest in a string of unusual regimes - so what's with the ostentatious suffering that goes with so many alpha male diets?If you spent the last week gawping at Renée Zellweger's face, trying to figure out which parts she can still actually move, you probably missed out on another drastic physical transformation that's taken place recently. That's right, Lord Falconer has revealed that he's lost five stone in two years. The secret to his new lithe appearance? Simple: all he did was exercise for 45 minutes most days. And he mainly just eats apples now. But if that sounds crazy, relax - he also drinks about three litres of Diet Coke every day, too. Don't worry about how nutritionally horrendous this might sound. The important thing is that it worked. Lord Falconer is a mere shadow of himself. So long as you don't spend too long wondering what his breath smells like, or the catastrophic state of his bowels, it's actually quite impressive. This means that George Osborne's day in the sun is already over. Just a few weeks ago Osborne was swanning around the Conservative party conference, showing off the effects of his recent 5:2 diet to all and sundry. But the 5:2 diet is for babies. Anyone can do it. Can Osborne look himself in the eye and know that he's experienced the constant headaches and aggressive acid reflux of the Hundreds of Apples and Loads of Diet Coke regime? He cannot, and this is why Lord Falconer wins. Because they're men, you see, and men don't like to diet unless they can also experience plenty of pointless suffering in the process. Forget common sense or sound, peer-reviewed nutritional advice - it's far more macho to rock up to an event looking gaunt and unsteady, telling everyone in earshot that you got in shape by licking a tin of tuna once a day for six months. Still, Osborne and Falconer still have some way to go before they can reach the lunatic peaks of Idiot Diet Grandmaster, Charles Saatchi. In 2008, he spent nine months existing on nothing but nine eggs a day, as part of a diet that almost certainly stripped his body of most of the important vitamins and minerals. So what lessons can we learn by looking at the newly-slimline silhouettes of Lord Falconer, George Osborne and Charles Saatchi? Well, we can learn that men like to utilise extreme methods to get results. Also, more importantly, we can learn that fat idiots are still idiots even when they're skinny.'Forget common sense or sound, peer-reviewed nutritional advice' ... Diet Coke and apples helped Lord Falconer lose five stone