All this hot weather during August has encouraged many people to shed clothes as well as many inhibitions, with some unfortunate results.

I have never seen so much surplus human flesh before.

Many of the people in Western Road, Brighton, have been wobbling rather than walking and I am looking at the ones who have managed to get out of their cars and stagger to the shops rather than those parking right next to Churchill Square.

I am not talking about those who are perhaps a little bit overweight by half a stone or so. These people are seriously stout. They are mountainous men and gargantuan girls.

Some have become the most extraordinary shapes, having bulges in places where most people don't even have places.

There are women with monstrous bottoms shovelled unbecomingly into jeans. There are men whose giant guts flop unenticingly over their belts.

Tagging along behind many of them are children who have been plump since birth and who are becoming fatter by the year.

It might be vaguely amusing in a rather repellent way were it not for the health implications.

Next to smoking, obesity is the single biggest preventable cause of illness and will soon overtake the noxious weed. It increases the susceptibility of people to every complaint from heart attacks to asthma.

What are people doing to combat this epidemic of obesity? Not enough, if the tide of discarded burger and doughnut cartons in Brighton is anything to go by.

Many fat people say they eat next to nothing but that does not accord with the evidence of my own eyes. The biggest people are usually the biggest munchers.

It's probably true that people are consuming less than they did 50 years ago but then they are taking far less exercise.

Most are driving rather than walking and using the remote rather than walking to the TV. They have washing machines rather than mangles, which required effort, and, in their centrally heated homes, they expend less energy than they did in cold, old houses.

Millions of overweight people are trying to follow some form of weight loss regime. The Atkins Diet is the current faddy favourite but will soon be supplanted by another one offering wondrous results.

In fact, most diets fail because losing weight is based on a simple formula. What goes in must be exceeded by what goes out.

The best way to discard surplus pounds and to keep them off is to build some sort of exercise routine into daily life along with a sensible eating regime. But it requires considerable self-discipline, which is totally beyond all but a few lard buckets in Brighton.

Every day I pass two health clubs and I see people driving into the car parks. In many cases they would do better to walk there or, better still, take a longer stroll in the sun, which would probably be more enjoyable than repetitive gym exercise.

For journeys of under five miles into work, it is far more pleasant to walk or use a bike rather than sit in a car. While there, it's a good idea to climb stairs rather than using lifts and move about a lot. Fat people don't fidget.

Anyone who has been to America will have seen the size of the problem there where half the population is seriously obese.

We as a nation are not yet on that gigantic scale but judging by the look of Brighton we are catching up fast. I'd like to think it could be reversed but frankly there's a fat chance of that happening.