Journalism

Men's Health - Will Power

For the attention of Andy Richardson
Andy - here’s the new bit which is rather dependent on remembering the numskulls. I’m sure you do. There are a few changes in the rest of the article so I’m sending the whole thing. Hope it’s OK! It’ll have to be as I don’t have time to re-write it. Let me know though! I’ll be in the office from 11am
Rich
Willpower

The kid I hated at primary school was Susan Restwell.
“Have you got any Easter eggs left Richard Herring” she would ask with her stupid swotty face.
“Of course I haven’t,” I’d growl back, “It’s September.”
"I’ve still got three and three quarters left” she smarmed, “I only eat a tiny piece every day, so my Easter eggs last for ages. I bet you wish you were me.”
Of course I didn’t give her the satisfaction of finding out that I had stuffed my five Easter eggs into my greedy mouth by 10am on Easter Sunday. And then been sick. The annoying thing is that she knew anyway. She was cleverer than me.
“Susan, your puritan stance is foolish,” I would counter, “Wasn’t it William Blake who said “the Road of Excess leads to the Palace of Wisdom”?”
“Of course it was Richard, but what Blake failed to understand is that the Road of Excess is a two way street with no signposts and in the other direction lies the Hut of Stupidity. That’s where you, like most of the travellers on that damn-ed highway, will end up.”
Susan Restwell was the personification of willpower. She had the ability to control herself completely and determine her own actions. I have the self determination of a European built space-rocket which is being controlled by one of those wobbly men you get at the end of the London Marathon.
The strange thing is that I can abstain. I once stopped drinking for six months to prove to myself I wasn’t an alcoholic, (which my doctor friend tells me is precisely the kind of thing an alcoholic would do) and then celebrated my feat by not stopping drinking for the next six months (ditto). I don’t have the ability to consume in moderation. If I have one beer or one chip or one Mr Kipling French Fancy I have to continue gorging until all available local supplies have been exhausted. (Remember the French Fancy famine of 1993? That was me.)
I do have manage to diet every now and again. But the motivation to do so does not come from some mysterious force within me. It comes from the fact that none of my trousers fit anymore. Not even the ones with elasticated waistbands.
So is there such a thing as willpower, or are we only forced to do the “correct” thing because of outside pressures? Would we ever stop drinking if we never got beer bellies and hangovers? Would we ever do any work if we weren’t scared of our bosses? Would we ever get out of bed, if we didn’t have to go to the toilet? Because if we were naturally motivated, then we wouldn’t need Mr Motivator. And you’d think that simple fact alone would be enough to get us leaping off our flabby butts.
To come to any satisfactory conclusion about this the existence of willpower, we must turn to the great philosophical treatise, “The Beano”. “The Numskulls” (the original strip from when we were kids, not it’s current bastard offspring) is a classic metaphorical interpretation of the age old academic conflict between free-will and pre-destination.. In the cartoon a balding man with a moustache is shown to be operated by a gang of tiny men (the eponymous heroes of the strip) who live inside his head (which always begged the question, was each of the Numskulls in turn operated by a gang of even tinier Numskulls, and so on to infinity? But that is for another time.)
Brainy, the Numskull who lived in the man’s brain (top nickname skills) was shown to plant thoughts (via a kind of primitive fax machine) into the man’s head which suggests that individual free will is a fantasy and we are nothing but automatons at the mercy of some rather foolish mites. However, every now and again the man has a spontaneous thought of his own, unprompted by his Numskull masters, confounding their expectations and consequently proving the existence of willpower. QED. Which unfortunately means that I’m just weak-willed.
But maybe my indlugences are a strength, not a weakness. I’m seizing the day, living for the moment. I’m a hedonist, a passionate consumer of all that life has to offer. Like River Phoenix, Jim Morrisson and James Dean, I want to live fast, die young, have a corpulent corpse. I’m a meteorite burning across the night sky and if I burn up or explode so what? I’ve had a good time. Admittedly River Phoenix and James Dean were never likely to be destroyed by their addiction to Banana Flavour Toffo Bars and Pickled Onion Monster Munch which is about as close to the edge as I’m prepared to get (I have hedonistic vertigo). So maybe I’m less a meteorite, more a sparkler being waved in the air at a bonfire night party, spelling out minor swear words.
It’s a sad truth that one man’s passionate consumer of all life’s joys is another man’s lazy, fat, greedy bastard.

Back in the playground Susan was wiping the floor with me. With staggering foresight for an 8 year old she would invariably close our arguments by triumphantly stating, “Of course the really interesting thing about our eating/saving chocolate dilemma is the effect it is certain to have on our adult sex lives. I will inevitably become obsessed with resisted temptation, tying up my lovers and leaving them for days on end without touching them. And your gorging of chocolate will directly affect your sex life too, making you too fat to ever get a shag.”
Susan, if you’re reading this, you were absolutely right. And if you turned out as you predicted maybe you’d like to get back in touch.