Local man Dave Deans is celebrating today after becoming the fattest man on his estate.
The 36-year-old taxi driver cracked open a bottle of coke and gorged on a family bucket of KFC chicken wings to celebrate more than doubling his weight in just under a year to tip the scales at 35 stone.
“I’m more than twice the man I used to be and couldn’t be happier,” Dave told reporters today.
“It hasn’t been easy,” he said, “I wasted years of my life being slim but now I am a fat bastard and at ease with the world.”
The joy on Dave’s bloated face, was a far cry from the miserable mug he sported 12 months ago as a “deadly dull” 14 stoner, barely registering on anyone’s radar.
But that all changed after looking at photographs of himself on a family holiday in Malaga in 2009.
“I was aware that no-one ever commented on my shape,” he said. “And when I saw myself in Bermuda shorts on the beach it was easy to see why. Dull, normal, ordinary, need I go on?
“I was so ashamed I never left the house for the next six weeks.”
A chance comment from a nurse, who remarked that Dave was the double of his brother, a well-known amateur cyclist in the Norwich area, was the final straw.
Dave immediately ditched the light lunches and fruit juices that had been the building blocks of his plain physique and embarked on a high-carb, fat-heavy, pastry, pie and sugar diet.
Dave’s typical daily intake would include a full English breakfast with chocolate muffins, a midday McDonald’s Big Mac washed down with a litre bottle of coke, a takeaway curry, two pizzas, pies, chips, a milkshake, two bacon sandwiches and a packet of chocolate Hob Nobs.
“I had to be very disciplined, but the results have been incredible,” said Dave. “People pretty soon started to sit up and take notice of me. My shambling gait and builder’s crack was unmissable.
“And if they couldn’t see me they could hear me. Just walking up the stairs left me wheezing like a steam train.”
Word quickly got out and pretty soon the media began to take an interest.
“The local newspaper featured me in a story about how I couldn’t find a pair or trousers to fit me and things just snowballed from there,” said Dave. “Local radio interviews were followed by the TV news and magazine articles.”
Dave is now working on a new Channel Four series You’re All a Bunch of Ugly Fat Bastards and is setting up his own fat person media consultancy advising obese people on how to break into TV.
Dave’s next target is to become the fattest man in Norwich. And he received some good news when his nearest challenger to the title, 42-stone pub landlord Roger Beale, collapsed of a suspected heart attack late last night.
