THERE was a programme on television the other day about the modern obsession with body image.

In May, an all-party parliamentary group heard the problem was so bad that girls as young as five were worried about their size and appearance.

Negative body image, the report said, was an underlying cause of health and relationship problems, a key contributor to low self-esteem and a major barrier to participation in school and progression at work.

Cosmetic surgery rates had increased by nearly 20% since 2008, it said, and the media, advertising industry and the cult of celebrity, are all to blame for driving the obsession with appearance.

Programmes including The Only Way Is Essex and The X Factor were said to focus “too much on the way people look”.

Factor in the glossy magazines packed with photographs of body perfect celebrities and wafer thin models and never mind Essex, many folk believe the only way is diet. Which can be harsh and doesn’t always work.

As my chum Sandra said: “I’m on three diets. I couldn’t get enough to eat on one.”

And the doctor had no sympathy when she said she wanted to diet. “What colour?” he said.

But is body image really a modern obsession?

William the Conqueror was so fat he went on a liquid diet: he drank only alcohol. Funnily enough, I know a few middle aged blokes who do the same.

Lord Byron may have been “mad, bad and dangerous to know”, but he was basically a fat lad who would put on weight at the mere sight of a meat pie. Because of this, he pursued an appalling diet to achieve fashionable thinness. Not drugs and booze. Diet. It was hardly rock and roll.

And a Victorian expert, Dr George Beard, issued a health warning against young women emulating the romantic poets passion for slim elegance, by attempting to survive on vinegar and rice, 150 years ago.

These days, body image might be more in your face because of the advance of media and communication; besides, there is a lot of money to be made selling glossy magazines and inventing new diets for the gullible.

But it’s not new. It was pursued with similar vigour in the past. Read the words of that old song Keep Young and Beautiful, first sung by Eddie Cantor in the 1933 musical Roman Scandals. Politically correct, it is not.

Keep young and beautiful, It’s your duty to be beautiful.

Keep young and beautiful, If you want to be loved.

Be sure and get your man, Wrap your body in a coat of tan.

Keep young and beautiful, If you want to be loved.

You’ll always have your way, If he likes you in a negligee.

Keep young and beautiful, If you want to be loved.

Oh, a slim little waist is a pleasure, And a trim little limb is divine

Oh, a sly little eye is a treasure, It’ll get him drunker than wine

You’ll drive him half insane, In a bathing suit of cellophane

Keep young and beautiful, If you want to be loved

They don’t write them like that, anymore.