My recipe for perfect porridge (and tight buttocks)

Warning: unsubstantiated claims follow

Creamy porridge
1 measure of cheap rolled oats
1 measure milk
1 measure and a bit more water
A substantial pinch of salt

Cook slowly, for an hour or so. Serve with drizzled honey and milk

There is one secret I want to share with you. It’s the reason I’m not the size of Falstaff – or if you are into serial TV rather than theatre in the round – Hurley from Lost.

It’s the reason, aside from years of hard-core military style yoga, impersonal training and even a long weekend spent with the SAS, that I have buttocks tight enough to crack a walnut, ankles shapely enough to sport Manolo Blahnicks and a potted belly that only measures 38 inches in circumference.

It’s the reason that despite having spent nearly 20 years at restaurant tables accumulating unfortunate stains on my trousers, and ruining enough Hermès ties to pay for Matt Preston’s entire dressing-up box ensemble of cravats, that I can survive a surfeit of lampreys and have not suffered cardiac arrest.

Here it is: I do not eat modern, healthy slimming breakfast cereals. I would rather shred the box of a modern cereal and eat that that its contents, which I can only assume have been swept from the bottom of a hamster cage, dyed pink and encrusted with sugar.

My secret is porridge. It is my winter alternative to my summer diet of various permutations of fruit, plain yoghurt, honey and nuts.

Don’t waste your money on easy or quick oats that take only 150 seconds to cook. The same goes for brands, such as Uncle Tobys’ where you will be paying for the sponsorship of some gorgeous, broad-shouldered Aryan who has Olympian ambitions (and would rather be eating that most nationalistic of snacks, the ANZAC biscuit).

I buy the cheapest home brand rolled oats. And I cook them slowly, which is the key.

Get up early and get them going – boiling – on the stove top. Then place in a preheated oven at 90C or so.

Feed the dog. Try to avoid leaving the house in track suit pants or bright white trainers. Walk the aforementioned dog for an hour or so enjoying the morning light playing on Port Phillip Bay (or Sydney Harbour).

Return home, and serve with more milk and brown sugar – palm sugar or honey if it pleases you – and watch the inches fall away.