Susie Orbach
Psychotherapist and writer

I have no truck with detoxes at all. The concept assumes that what one usually does is somehow terrible and one has to purge oneself afterwards. To me, eating, drinking and enjoying yourself are not criminal activities, nor are they things one has to detox from. If you think you overdo it, just try to be thoughtful and mindful of this. If a close friend or relative was detoxing, I'd only have to look at them and laugh - and I think they'd get it.

Katie Price/Peter Andre
Model and singer

Katie Over Christmas I did eat a lot - I love curries. But now January is here we are both committed to losing a few pounds. I'm training five times a week for an hour with a personal trainer, and so is Peter. We are both doing the juicing diet, which I follow if I have put some weight on. I have a juice in the morning and then at lunch, and then fish or chicken salad or veg in the evening. At midnight on New Year' Eve I was drinking a cup of tea - can you believe that we both don't drink much these days? I'm glad, though, as your skin suffers when you drink.

Peter I had put on some weight before the wedding but managed to lose some before September. I now need to tone up. I want to get my abs back to as near as possible where they were six years ago. I'm doing a lot of cardiovascular work. I think it's good to have a detox every year - it cleans your system out. If it is only for a certain amount of time, it isn't that bad.

William Leith
Author of The Hungry Years: Confessions of a Food Addict

Is detoxing a good idea? Of course it is. More important, though, is removing the attitude that made you poison yourself in the first place. If you're addicted to booze and fast food, and you lay off for a week, and then start eating burgers and fries again, and going to the pub after work until closing time ... well, the week on the wagon won't have done much good.

Can detoxing be a bad idea? I don't know. I've known people who've jumped into a version of detox in the new year, and failed, and been hurt by the failure. The answer, I think, is that detox will only work if you find out why you filled yourself with poisons in the first place. If not your short period of detox will give way to a much, much longer period of retox.

Linford Christie
Former Olympic 100m champion

Because I don't drink alcohol and have a relatively healthy diet, I don't really feel the need to detox after Christmas. I don't think it is a bad thing for people to be more aware of what they are drinking and eating after the party season but I don't believe in giving your body things that may force the process, or make it harder work than it needs to be. I am a fan of everything in moderation so don't subscribe to diets; and while I am bad at drinking the advised quantity of water, I do snack on fruit which provides my body with a lot of fluid. My advice would be to drink water, get some rest and do more exercise than you would normally do.

Gillian McKeith
TV diet expert

Detoxification removes the challenges from the diet. Challenges are burdens or stressers to the body, which make the body work hard, but do not supply sufficient nutrients in return. Detoxification introduces nourishing foods and fluids to the body. If you have health troubles such as lack of energy, skin problems, hormonal imbalances, digestive problems, arthritic conditions or headaches, your body may be telling you that it is under-nourished and compromised. In my almost two decades of working with one-to-one consultations in private practice, I have found that many symptoms can be reduced by lessening the body's toxic load. Introducing nutritious foods may assist this process; my clients certainly report a renewed sense of well-being.

George Melly
Jazzman and author

Detox? What's that? Can you spell it? Oh, I see, it's when people try to compensate for their greed. In the past, I've eaten and drunk too much but I never really dieted. I just suddenly got thinner as I got older, and my appetite naturally lessened. My doctor made me give up drinking for three months in the 60s, so I just smoked a lot of pot instead. I'll turn 80 in August but I'm a terrible example. I drink a fair amount of Irish whiskey now, but not as much as I did. Sometimes sherry in the morning. And usually beer with food. I was told to lay off red wine because of my arthritis. Then I read about some new research claiming it was good for arthritis, so I decided to pay attention to that. I smoke cigarettes all the time, too.

Raymond Blanc
Chef and restaurateur

Only a few countries in the world have such a big problem with self-esteem to do this thing of swinging from one extreme to the other - from bingeing to dieting. We have not yet learned to eat well, and our terible diet feeds low self-esteem. After Christmas, everyone goes to a gym or for a "miracle cure". I think you would get as much good from eating a nice fresh tomato as you would get from many detox items. I spent six beautiful days with my family where we ate and drank well. But the difference is that, as in all latin countries, we drink with food; we hardly ever drink without food. That is an English invention - all those bars with their happy hours. I've put on a couple of kilos, but I'm not upset about it. I will lose those kilos very quickly, in a few days, without punishment. I will play a bit more tennis and have a nice brisk walk, which I do quite often. And when you work in a kitchen, you get plenty of exercise.