Heavyweight success. Kay Mellor’s script perfectly captures the barmy neurosis that pervades the lives of slimmers and takes over normally sane personalities the instant they decide they should shed a pound or two… The acting by fat and thin alike, of the highest quality, the writing is as fruity as a Christmas pudding complete with silver threepenny bits, and the jokes comes thick and fast. All in all a thoroughly superior piece of work, and a thoroughly enjoyable one.

There is a distinctive feel about it. It is cosy, domestic, acutely observed, touching and looks dead easy. Ruth Jones was strikingly delightful as the over flowingly fat and sassy Kelly. We meet her failing to force herself into a flouncy wedding dress. It is you feel entirely the fault of the wedding dress for failing to get into the fun of things.

A dramatic new diet of comedy. This new series by Kay Mellor is set in a Leeds slimming club but it’s also sat in the same territory that Mellor has so skillful marked out in her previous work. Once again we’re in a world as matriarchal as the early Coronation Street, and as able to blend comedy with genuine emotion, yet a world too that seems bang up -to -date, exactly like ours in fact, only with better dialogue.

Kay Mellor’s latest drama series came in the same laughter - and - tears mould as her Band of Gold and Playing the Field: tons of sentiment and lashing of vulgarity. Mellor doesn’t do propaganda. Mellor does personality. Her ear for how women talk when men aren’t around is infallible. Fat Friends should turn us in to couch potatoes for the next five weeks.