Inspiring Mosley's radical ideas on diet were devoured

In 2013, Dr Michael Mosley changed the way a nation ate. That was the year the broadcaster, who has died at the age of 67 after going missing on holiday in Greece, released his groundbreaking first book, The Fast Diet.

- KATIE ROSSEINSKY

It advocated the “5:2” method of drastically restricting your calorie consumption on two days out of every seven, and was an immediate sensation upon its release. Everyone from celebrity chefs to politicians to the colleague you bumped into in the kitchen seemed to be singing its praises.

As a bemused New York Times report put it, Britain had “develop[ed] a voracious appetite for a new diet”. But popularising the 5:2 – and the overall concept of intermittent fasting – was just one facet of Mosley’s unique broadcasting career, which saw him test out often strange-seeming techniques or take on unusual challenges in the name of learning more about how our bodies work, and how we might lead a healthier life.

His self-experimentation, he once admitted to The Guardian, was inspired by his father’s death as a result of complications from diabetes. “No male in my family has made it beyond 72,” he said. “His friends said how much like him I was, so he was kind of a warning from history.”

Mosley’s career path was an unconventional one. After studying politics, philosophy and economics at the University of Oxford, he spent two years in the City as an investment banker, but found the work unsatisfying. “I decided then that my primary interest in life wasn’t making money for myself or other people,” he later told the British Medical Journal. “I was passionately interested in what makes people tick… and I actually went into medicine intending to become a psychiatrist.”

He started medical school soon afterwards, and met his wife Dr Clare Bailey on his first day. But his psychiatry placements felt underwhelming too. “I went into it with huge hopes and beliefs, and then it became more obvious that there were severe limitations to what you could do,” he said.