Guido has to be the first to ask, is it really the classical bulimia condition he is describing?
I was getting all this pleasure stuffing food in, perhaps if I could get it out, I could carry on eating, do the same the next day. So I started deliberately sicking it up. I’d go to the toilet after guzzling, put a finger down my throat, and make it all come up. It was surprisingly easy.
Prezza is admitting it had nothing to do with poor self-image, or other self-esteem issues and all to do with him enjoying going through all the numbers on the menu at the local Chinese.
Whenever I go to Mr Chu’s in Hull, my favourite Chinese restaurant in the whole world, great atmosphere, great people, I could eat my way through the entire menu.
He would sick it up so he could consume more. That is plain old fashioned gluttony. The Romans knew the joy of orgies of over-eating followed by vomiting. Cicero, in Pro Rege Deiotaro, records that Julius Caesar “expressed a desire to vomit after dinner” (vomere post cenam te velle dixisses), and says that the dictator took emetics for this purpose.
Prezza is not suffering from a tragic condition, he is just a gluttonous, greedy sicko.
Prezza’s self-outing has neverthless given Guido the courage to confess that he too suffers from an eating disorder. Guido’s recent weight gain has been cruelly mocked by cartoonists and even the usually so right-on stick-to-the-ishoos types. Rich Johnston the cartoonist described the technical term for Guido’s condition as “daddy fat”. In fact during the first three years of married life Guido was gaining weight at the rate of a pound per month.
Although Guido has yet to sign his book contract, it seems that now is the right time to reveal the suffering and torment caused by endless long lunches, bottles of Margaux, Port and cheese accompaniments…
