Alex Brooker: My Perfect Body

According to a survey cited here, one in three men would give up a year of their lives for the perfect body. So why, when and how did men become so ridiculously body-conscious? This film, amiably fronted by Paralympics presenter (and co-presenter of chat show 'The Last Leg', which returns tonight at 10pm) Alex Brooker, explores this burgeoning phenomenon via the now-inevitable TV journey trajectory, which in this case involves Brooker himself attempting to lose weight before going on a beach holiday in Croatia.

It’s jaunty but a little superficial, preferring to skate over the surface as opposed to really getting under the skin of the trend. Worse still, it flirts with buying into the body-fascism paradigm rather than really challenging it – Brooker never seems to seriously ponder the roots of our absurd new vanity but instead contents himself with trying to keep up with it. We thoroughly enjoyed Brooker’s contributions to ‘The Last Leg’, but he can, and hopefully will, do better than this.