Another reason to thank the bankers: the more miserable we are, the longer we live. During the Great Depression, life expectancy went up by six years.
Eat, Fast & Live Longer (BBC2, Monday 9pm) sounded like an Olympic mantra but instead of showing Chris Hoy weeping into his Bran Flakes it continued Horizon’s noble mission of turning us into a nation of quasi-Jimmy Saviles, ageless cadavers in tracksuits grinning eerily into eternity.
Michael Mosley - who earlier this year claimed a three-minute burst of intense exercise was better than hours on the treadmill - went to visit the “new species of calorie restrictors”, who look just like us but are up to 50% more joyless.
Joe Cordell has spent the past 20 years eating bowls of apple skin and chucking the rest. He excelled at balancing on one leg with his eyes closed - apparently a reliable sign of youthfulness, but as a skill only really useful to a pirate searching for his peg-leg in a dingy brig.
But blood tests classed him as a spunky “super-athlete”, like centenarian marathon runner Fauja Singh. He put his vigour down to eating kid-sized portions - and presumably not Happy Meals. Only cynics would complain that seven hours and 49 minutes really isn’t that quick for a marathon these days.
Killer research showed alternating ‘fast days’ with ‘feed days’ could radically extend lifespan. But judging from the closing scenes, Mosley will use his extra years sitting at a desk listening to Daft Punk.
Youth, as they don’t say, is wasted on the elderly.
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