Mum's obsession with weight MADE ME FAT

For years, Susannah Jowitt battled with her mum's attitude that you can only be happy if you're thin

- SUSANNAH JOWITT

When I was 12, I was jolted awake by a searing pain in my stomach. As the house was full with family and friends for the bank holiday weekend, I was sleeping in the little dressing room  next to my parents’ room, so I soon woke my mother, Juliet, with my moans of pain. She came in and looked down almost crossly at me. ‘No wonder you’ve got a tummy ache,’ she told me. ‘You ate so many canapes last night before I stopped you, I’m not surprised. You must stop being so greedy, Susannah!’

This was a well-worn reproach and would not have passed into family legend had it not been for the fact that this was actually the moment my appendix had burst. Over the course of the weekend, it dawned on everyone that this was not indigestion, and I was rushed to Harrogate hospital in North Yorkshire for a life-saving operation and a two-week stay. The canapes had been framed for a crime they did not commit.

Yet my mother stepping in to save me from greed has been a theme of my life. When I was 11, she took me to ‘darling Johnny’, her doctor in London. They put

me on the scales and looked at the number, approaching 7st (within the acceptable range for a fairly tall, sporty girl of my age).

‘Oh dear,’ said the doctor. ‘That’s too high for your age. Better pop you on a diet.’ And so it began. I had never been a skinny child, but this was the first time I’d felt fat. Only in my 20s did my mum confess it had been a set-up – she had asked ‘darling Johnny’ to say this so she could persuade me that controlling my eating was a good idea.