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Diary on quest to slim results in a 'book of big' for columnist

A journalist from the Western Mail has penned an “alternative diet book”, charting her personal trials and tribulations of trying – and failing – to lose weight and get fit.

Hannah Jones, magazines editor at the Western Mail, writes a weekly column about her quest to drop a dress size or two and has based her light-hearted book Diary of a Diet – The Little Book of Big on the column.

The size 24 writer told holdthefrontpage: “It’s all about what it’s like to be big when normal size women are worrying about the size of their arse, and is a look at myself as someone who is constantly dieting and unhappy with the way they look.

“It is very honest. I say how it is, but it is done in a very funny way I hope.

“It’s aimed at anyone who has ever been on a diet. I don’t have any fat friends but they can all relate to it – I don’t know anyone who hasn’t been on a diet.”

She added: “I’ve been writing the column for WM Magazine for about a year-and-a-half and I’m the only fat person in it.

“It’s really refreshing that someone who is a size 24 is writing in a beauty magazine, and it seems popular.”

Hannah, a former editor of the Gwent Gazette and Neath and Port Talbot Guardian, won her book deal with Accent Press after fellow columnist and author Lynne Barrett Lee suggested her column would make a great book and put her in touch with Accent.

Hannah, (35), was quickly signed up and she then spent three months putting the book together, with a mix of original work and column which had previously been published in the Western Mail.

Comedian Jo Brand has also written the foreword.

Hannah said: “My publisher said I needed to get someone famous to write something, and so I asked a few ‘big’ celebrities like Dawn French and Fern Britton, and Jo Brand was the only one who said yes.

“I never spoke to her, I just went through her agent, but she was really gracious and turned it round really quickly, summimg up in one page what I did in 70,000 words.

“It was great to get her on board. We didn’t pay her but I did send her four pork pies!”

Now the book is published Hannah is on the publicity trail, attending various book signings, which she says can either be “really good or soul destroying”.

She said: “It is surprising how many people come along and eat my fondant fancies and say ‘I love your column and what you do’ and wish you luck, but then don’t buy the book.

“I’m still shocked to have a book and see it on bookshelves. I also saw someone reading it on a train, which was really surreal but a massive thrill.”