Anna steers us to the latest doings of “holistic nutritionist” and health guru Gillian McKeith. Readers may recall Ms McKeith’s television series You Are What You Eat, in which our host thrilled the nation with her enthusiastic cataloguing of human excrement. Ms McKeith’s latest venture is more ambitious still. Indeed, it’s positively mind-bending.

The Gillian McKeith Wellness Retreat in southern Spain is an educational inspirational centre for the spirit, mind and body to learn, discover, explore and get closer to the essence of Your Self and Life; and through this process you seek to garner inner harmony and balance.

I can tell you’re intrigued. Who wouldn’t want to get closer to their essence? Intimacy with one’s essence is apparently achieved in seven days by means of,

High enzyme vegan foods, raw meals, sprouts and juices,

Combined with,

massage, Chi Yoga, meditation,

And,

tennis.

After seven days of tennis, sprouts and essence fondling,

You will receive a Certificate of Completion and join the Path for a whole new life.

You’ll also receive a bill for £1,500. Though the fee does include,

a nurturing staff,

nurturing mountains,

And,

swooning eagles.

Yes, the eagles actually swoon. Imagine the spectacle of magnificent birds keeling over from sheer emotional fatigue. The place must be littered with them. It’s the “natural vitality” of the region that does it.

Oh, there’s more.

During New York’s twelve-day heat wave, August and September 1953.

Note the combination of ice lolly and gloves. That’s classy, that is.

I know you’re above such things, obviously, but you may know someone for whom this may be helpful.

Bearing in mind the recent seasonal gorging, here’s another Classic Sentence from the Guardian. This time courtesy of Neel Mukherjee and his deep ruminations on vegetarianism.

It slowly dawned on me that there were no rational, intellectual or moral arguments to be made for carnivorousness.

Heavens, he’s bold. There simply isn’t a good reason to partake of the flesh. None whatsoever. I do hope there’s a devastating argument to support such a claim.

The meat-eaters had always already lost. This is not the place to rehearse all those arguments.

Ah. Not the place. Isn’t it wonderful when arguments can be won entirely in your own head, with none of that messy business with evidence, logic and stuff you hadn’t thought of? Mr Mukherjee does, however, indulge us with one attempt at reasoning:

Far more convincing for me than all kinds of shocking exposés of the meat industry and the way a piece of steak makes it way on to our plates… was the unimpeachable moral argument against speciesism: because we are the most powerful animals in the animal kingdom, because all animals are at our mercy and we can choose to do whatever we want with them, it is our moral duty not to decimate, factory farm and eat them. It is an argument of such majesty and generosity that its force is almost emotional.

Note the invention of an entirely new prejudice for those so inclined to feel guilty about – speciesism. Note too the sly conflation of meat eating with factory farming and decimation. This “unimpeachable moral argument” could of course be expressed a little less tendentiously,

Because we can eat animals it’s our duty not to.

But then – amazingly – it loses much of its persuasive force. To say nothing of its majesty.

Before Chuck-E-Cheese there was The Rock-afire Explosion.

“I started a new restaurant chain called Showbiz Pizza Place and we got singing robots in there…” 

 (h/t, Anna.)