As the last slice of turkey is chased down the gullet with a final goblet of mulled wine, our thoughts turn to renewal, reinvention and losing some pigging weight. As ever, there is a variety of celebrities to guide us to sleekly muscled glory via the lucrative medium of the fitness workout DVD. An increasingly competitive market has led this year to a crop of covers adorned with some superlative before and after pictures, attesting to the transformative power of the contents. But who will win the coveted - and did I mention lucrative? - bestseller slot?
Rosemary Conley's Brand New You with Coleen Nolan
This has Before Coleen - that's Size 18 Coleen! Pitiful Coleen! Just Eaten a Giant Pie of Despair Coleen! - profiling a post-pregnancies stomach in an unflattering black-and-white dress from circa 1987 that clings carefully in all the wrong places. But look! What's this? It is After Coleen, who has either shed a lot of weight and been nailed into a steel swimming costume, mutated into a superhero or had her head and bosom superimposed on to a picture of a 1950s male wrestler. A contender.
Tricia Penrose - Before and After Body Blitz
Oh dear. Ms Penrose appears to have gilded the lily. No makeup, face like thunder and slouching to emphasise a pooched-out tummy (before) becomes bronzed, airbrushed Amazon in rictus (after). It smacks of desperation and contempt for buyers. We do know what you look like on Heartbeat. And where is the sense of all-gals-refusing-that-second-Hobnob-together warmth that Coleen exudes so effortlessly? No, no.
Natalie Cassidy's Then and Now Workout
"Then" gives us the forlorn smile and chubby physique we remember from her time as SoniaoffEastenders. "Now" gives us the post-nose and boob-job Natalie who has also turned herself into a svelte Terminator 3 lookalike who may be about to burst out of the photograph and bite your head off to get at the creamy centre. And either the camera lies like Baron Munchhausen or she has also had a pelvis transplant. More worrying than inspiring.
Whichever you plump (ha!) for, do remember: it was the 32 hours a day with a personal trainer and three ounces of steamed fish a week that really did it.
