GOT yourselves a New Year’s Resolution? I really, really hope not. If there’s one thing worse than a resolution of your own to live up to, it’s having to live up to those of other people.

Clee Towers has been a whirlwind of activity since 2009 put in its first appearance – and it’s not of my doing, unfortunately.

Unwanted, read books that have been piled high on our overburdened bookshelves since the dawn of the Millennium, if not the dawn of time, have been parcelled up and sent off to Oxfam.

Clothes drawers and wardrobes have been gone through with a fine-toothed comb to winkle out items past their sell-by date. There’s talk of raised beds being built in the back garden, and of a climbing holiday being booked in the near future.

All these are, of course, entirely laudable ideas; I just didn’t come up with them myself.

When that happens, the rational mind tells you that resolutions are good things and that you should join in; but you may not be feeling too rational.

If, for example, you are still nursing the cold you came down with in early December, the most ambitious resolution you can come up with is to try to stop coughing at last.

When that finally happens, the rest should be a doddle.


* AT LEAST my Mr Motivator doesn’t come shrink-wrapped in day-glo Lycra, unlike the spectacle unfolding itself on the nation’s TV screens right now.

If Celebrity Big Brother wasn’t enough to drive you kicking and screaming to the gym, or indeed anywhere outside the house, GMTV has come up with something infinitely more disturbing.

Mr Motivator, the fearsome fitness instructor the station hired to get us into shape in the early nineties, is back for a three-week post-Christmas flab-fighting campaign.

Be afraid, gentle readers, be very afraid, because Derrick Evans, the 56-year-old grandfather otherwise known as Mr Motivator, is roaming the land looking for unwary individuals on whom to inflict his outfits at close quarters.

If that were not punishment enough for being out of shape, he’ll probably be trying to get you moving, too.

Today, Mr Motivator was even due to interview Gordon Brown about the country’s health policies, although as I wrote it was not known whether the conversation would take place over a cup of Number Ten coffee or over a few squats and lunges in a Whitehall gym.

What a prospect.

There’s talk that Derrick may be gracing our screens for some time to come; that he could be offered a much longer stint on breakfast telly. He obviously goes hand-in-hand with a recession.

It has to be said, of course, that Derrick is a walking advert for the benefits of a healthy lifestyle, boasting an athletic physique and, it must be said, great legs. Men half his age should be delighted to look like he does… apart from that terrifying gym kit.

Mr Motivator was so successful back in the nineties that his fame spawned a line of clothing, and this week he boasted to GMTV viewers that he is still able to wear it now.

He obviously doesn’t share one of our New Year’s resolutions, then. That retina-burning kit would have been straight down to the clothing bin if he had.