Welcome to the Beatcroft newsletter. This week there’s an essay fuelled by the news that the top appetite suppressant drugs are going up in price – and popularity. Read or listen to me reading it. A piece of doggerel on the same subject and then an hour-long Mixloud/Spotify collection of tunes to stimulate your appetite. Playlist and links below.

I was always hungry. Hunger drove me, motivated me, distracted and obsessed me. It energised and incentivised. I was perpetually fantin’ (Scottish vernacular: desperate for food to the extent of weakness; in a state of self-perceived starvation).

We were a family of five, and if anyone left anything reasonably edible on their plate at the end of a meal, I’d hoover it up. I’d race to finish a dish so I could attempt to claim second helpings. At school, as lunch (or, as we called it, dinner) time approached, I’d feel a creeping tingle begin in my fingertips and spread slowly up my arms, until a choking weakness began to claw at my chest and gut. No school-supplied dinners. We lived near enough for me to stagger home, or sometimes to the Tudor Café next to the golf course. A mutton pie. Another one. Chips. Beans. Bread and butter. Savoury or neutral flavours, for preference, nothing sweet. Cramming in the fuel until there was enough to get me to teatime.

Fill up. Burn it off, Fill up again. Top-ups for security. Toasted – or we said roasted – cheese at supper time, meaning just before bedtime. I still get into trouble with English friends who refer to ‘supper’ as some weird cross between tea and dinner, the main evening meal. Supper for us was a necessary adjunct, a piece of edible security before the long fast of the night. I have learned that lunch is not necessarily dinner, but for me ‘what are you having for your tea?’ cannot refer to some prissy afternoon sandwich and scone thing. ‘Tea’ is really ‘dinner’, slightly earlier. Those sandwiches and scones and cakes are just running replenishment.

It’s fair to say I enjoy eating. Not everything, I do discriminate. I have enjoyed Michelin-starred plate-streaks-and-smears as well as tinned 3.00am burgers from Maggie’s van in Queen Margaret Drive. But the key point is surely: without hunger, where’s the pleasure? Yes, I know, first world problems and all that, obesity is killing our kids…but for many years (not so much now, in my 70th year) I could eat any amount of anything without putting on a milligram. And I was never an athlete, never sporty. I was just….busy. 

And very hungry. Fast metabolism, mum would say. “Fill up with bread.” That was dad. More cheese. That was me.

Now there are drugs to stop you being hungry. At the same time, my hunger has diminished and is within, mostly, reasonable bounds. One pie, not three. Or two. I’m slower now, and the fuel doesn’t get burnt off so quickly. Also, I have two heartattacks and the consequent drug regime to consider. No longer is the half-bottle-of-Bells-and-a-black-pudding-supper-per-five-thousand-words writing regime sustainable. Not every week. Thank God for Atorvastatin and Clopidogrel.

But still. There’s exercise hunger, fresh air fantin’: walking hunger, cycling hunger and especially motorcycling hunger. The gradual assertion of bodily need, and the merest whiff of chopped onions from a nearby hotel kitchen, the remembered reek of Gibson Street fenugreek on a summer Kelvingrove night, or the devastating aroma of chip shop in the air… the drive to consume takes over.

But there are people a few miles from our house, even in these wealthy Zetlandic outposts, who can’t afford to buy enough food. Who go hungry to ensure their kids don’t. For whom those airborne cooking smell are not signals of imminent fulfilment, but the worst kind of teasing torture. Who slip into the foodbank when nobody’s looking to stock up on grim, processed essentials. Their hunger is not for assuaging by Jeremy-Clarkson-approved injections. They need fuel to live.

And now there are others in this same community paying £300 a month or more for drugs to anaesthetize their appetites. The National Health Service can also be persuaded to fund these drugs in cases of extreme obesity.  But some people are paying simply out of vanity, to shrink their guts and chins to something more visually or psychologically appealling. For that they sacrifice the pleasure of anticipatory hunger.

There is an irony, not to say an obscenity there. And obviously malnutrition is not restricted to our local communities. Every moment of every day we are subject to pictures  of entire countries in the grip of famine. But presumably some privileged folk do not feel even the vaguest twinge of their desire for sustenance. Instead  they jag themselves and head for the scales and the mirror.

And give up the joy of food. All this is happening at a time when the obsession with cuisine is reaching ridiculous levels. Social media influencers share videos of the free grub they’re clearly not shovelling into their filled and Botoxed faces. A thousand quid to mention your restaurant on TikTok, landlord, and make with the free cocktails and caviar, quick! Superstar chefs tweak and twiddle stupid tasting menus of 30 or more dishes with matched ‘natural’ wines that reek of compost heaps and well-matured J-cloths. People commit horrific  assaults on burgers and glutophobes claim bread is killing us all.

Me, I’m still hungry. I baked a couple of loaves yesterday, and left their crusted aroma to linger in the house as I went to bed. Knowing I’d wake up ravenous and ready for the Best Toast In the Known World. Well, there’s at least half a loaf left. 

And I, with my fiscal ability to fulfil my hunger, indulge my appetite, my fantin’ pleasure, cultivate it, indeed, with long walks and the gasping adrenalin of motorcycle sheep avoidance…am I any better than the jaggers and the shrinkers?

Got them old Mounjaro Ozempic Wegovy Xenical Saxenda Blues again (Slight Return)

You’re not hungry. I’m glad of that
I wouldn’t want you to get fat 
Three hundred quid a month, you pay:
Your appetite vanishes away
And the kilograms just disappear
Though you’re more wrinkled now, I fear
Perhaps the weight dropped off too soon
The plum you were is now a prune 
And side effects? The risks are clear
Some unexpected diarrhoea
Can lead to most unpleasant scenes
Abandonment of those white jeans
You hoped would accentuate your waist
And also you have lost your taste
For foods that used to go down sweetly 
You’ve learned to regurgitate discreetly
But listen, I may have the solution
I’ll help you bring it to fruition
I know folk who can’t afford to heat
Their houses, and for them to eat
The food bank, not some posh fishmonger
Is how they quell their constant hunger
I’ve checked and for three hundred pounds 
They’ll form a rota and come round 
They’ll tie you to a handy chair 
And eat while you just sit and stare 
If necessary they’ll also stay
With you, preventing takeaways
You’ll like watching them consume
The food that would have unleashed doom
On you, and to ensure there’s no escape
They’ll seal your mouth with sellotape 
It’s perfect: you will soon be thinner
Famished weans will get some dinner
And cash. The rich and poor will thrive
You’ll get slim. They might survive.

Hungry Like the Ozempic Wolf: A pure fantin’ playlist

The Mixcloud version starts with Nick Lowe (off vinyl and pretty rough), while the Spotify playlist doesn’t have that track at all. Sorry about that.

Mixcloud: https://www.mixcloud.com/tom-morton2/hungry-like-the-ozempic-wolf-a-fantin-playlist/ Spotify below:

• Nick Lowe’s Last Chicken in the Shop – Let’s Eat
• Love & Money – Cheeseburger
• Paul Heaton – Fish ‘N’ Chip Supper
• Hatfield & The North – Let’s Eat (Real Soon)
• The Pirates – Let’s Eat
• The Beatles – Savoy Truffle – Remastered 2009
• Guy Clark – Homegrown Tomatoes
• Carolina Chocolate Drops – Cornbread and Butterbeans
• Honey Island Swamp Band – Chocolate Cake
• North Mississippi Allstars – Goat Meat
• Hank Williams – Jambalaya (On The Bayou)
• Sam Fender – TV Dinner
• Prince – BREAKFAST CAN WAIT