I now have to ask all naturally slim people to stop reading, because YOU have no cause for complaint at all. Sitting up in bed every morning will be enough exercise to give you great definition and the reason is: You ain’t got no fat covering your measly little weakling tummy muscles, so they naturally look good, even though you couldn’t say the word crunch fifty times in a row, let alone do it!

Here, you see, is the problem: I do 360 crunches (and related ab excercises) twice a week, I can crunch on an incline bench holding on to a 20kg plate until they angels take mercy on me and I pass out and yet all I have been able to manage is a three and a half pack if I tighten my abs and the lighting is right. And the problem, as I was about to point out is: I have a half an inch of fat covering my covetable definition (well, okay, maybe and an inch and a half), softening my six pack into a party pack.

So the solution is simple, say you: Loose the gut! And I guess I could. All I would need to do would be give up life as we know it. No more late nights, no food but what a starved rabbit would nibble at, no wine, no beer, no alcohol. I have tried this, believe me and those were the worst six hours of my life! And anyway, what would I look like with a body fat of 9%, which is roughly what you need to show off that desirable midriff? With less fat in my face, the lines will deepen and I will look as old as I am and who can risk that?

What then, I hear you ask, IS the secret to great abs? Well, my friends, youth is the secret, plain and simple. If you’re under thirty (okay, thirty five, maybe), go and get that six pack now and enjoy it while it lasts, show it off as much and as often as you can in any untoward situation and remember to take lots of pictures of it, because when middle age strikes, that middle will spread like butter in the noonday sun and everyone will stare at those pictures and say: My God! Was that YOU?