This’ll kill ya. Or if it doesn’t, something else will.

So there I am, puttering around in the kitchen this morning. The kitchen TV is turned on and the news is playing. I'm taking the news in with only half an ear and one eye when some smug-looking Brit comes on.

He was a doctor. I also think the news station was NBC-TV in New York, but don’t hold me to that.

What finally got my attention is that the Brit started to talk about the notion that carrying around weight kills you and food kills, too. He wasn’t talking about heart attacks. He was talking about cancer.

Some of the points I think I heard that self-satisfied-looking, smug-sounding sawbones make included these:

1. If your fat makes you “apple-shaped” (i.e., you have lots of belly fat) you’re in greater danger than if you’re “pear-shaped” (i.e. the fat is on your butt.)

So what are people supposed to do about that, you self-important British buffoon? Go to the doctor and ask for belly-to-butt fat transplant?

2. You shouldn’t eat meat, but if you do eat meat, it should be no bigger than a pack of cigarettes.

So now you’re telling me that to avoid cancer, I should out and buy a pack of cigarettes? And what about all those doctors who only a little while ago were telling me to stop eating anything with white starches -- white bread, spaghetti, potato -- and start eating meat instead? Ever hear of the Atkins diet? Maybe you'd prefer I ate the cigarettes.

3. “I understand you Americans like hot dogs a great deal.” He then said that while we really shouldn’t eat them, but if we do eat them, to eat them in moderation.

Good for you, generalizing from who-knows-what cliché about Americans wolfing down hot dogs, you pompous English fuddy-duddy. You probably watched some clip of the annual summer Coney Island Hot Dog Eating Contest and jumped to the wrong conclusion from insufficient data. Who let you pass your first Moron Science class?

Incidentally, I understand you English eat disgusting things yourselves, like cold beans on toast for breakfast, and then you go out for fried fish and “chips” for lunch. Carry on old boy because you're English, but eat I recommend eating that disgusting filth in moderation.

4. Alcohol, we in the audience were lectured, should be avoided because it tends to caused colon cancer and breast cancer.

On the other hand, other quarters of the medical community are recommending that you and I drink a glass of wine a day – just like those skinny French drink wine – to avoid heart disease and cancer. It's supposed to improve circulation and get the heart beating a trifle faster, sort of like a brisk walk. Are you against exercise, too?

Make up your muddled mind!

The Crank’s beautiful girlfriend – and I can assure you without going into details that she has considerably more medical knowledge than the average TV news producer – says it all boils down to one thing:

“Nobody's getting out of here alive.” That applies always, no matter what you eat.

I don’t know what you’re going to do about all this, but personally, I intend to go home and have a sizzling sirloin steak as thick as a pompous English doctor’s head, charred on the outside and bloody on the inside, plus a steaming baked potato with slabs butter melting through its fluffy white insides, and a nice glass of Cabernet Sauvignon.

I mean, let’s face it. Everybody has to die of something and personally, I'd rather not die of starvation.

I know not what course you may take but as for me, I’d rather die of a sizzling steak, cabernet sauvignon and chocolate chip cherry vanilla ice cream than of a dreary pile of lettuce leaves and a dry slice of whole wheat bread.

Pass the cigarettes. I need to measure my sirloin.