What’s the maddest summer diet you’ve been on?

As a Seventies diet consisting of almost nothing but eggs and wine comes to light . . .

Last week, in my column for the Mail, I mentioned that I had recently come across an old stash of magazines from the Seventies and Eighties — including a 1977 Vogue containing one of the most bonkers weight-loss regimes in human history: the egg and white wine diet.

It goes as follows. Breakfast: one egg, one glass of white wine, one black coffee. lunch: two eggs, two glasses of white wine, black coffee. Dinner: steak, remainder of white wine, coffee.

Quite what the science behind this diet would have been is anyone’s guess. Maybe they thought being half-cut from dawn to dusk would take the edge off the hunger pangs. But, it being 1977, I imagine the only available white wine would have been Blue Nun — a sickly sweet, calorieladen concoction likely only to make cravings worse.

Still, it conjured up entertaining visions in my mind of armies of Vogue readers in halter-necks and flares, lolling around supermarkets like malfunctioning Stepford wives, crashing into each other on the school-run and falling asleep in their husband’s souffles, before coming, hungry and hungover, to devour the children’s leftovers.

Actually, if my memories of my parents’ friends in the Seventies are anything to go by, that’s not a wholly inaccurate description.

Growing up, I remember the quest to become and remain thin being of paramount importance to every single woman (and many men, too) and not just because the fashions of the day demanded it. It was almost as though there were some kind of moral virtue attached to the notion of slenderness: being thin was the mark of someone active, in control, alluring.

By contrast, being overweight was a sign of failure and moral weakness.

Not much has changed. Society looks down on the overweight still, even as we continue to swell in numbers. to be thin is to be loved; to be fat is to be reviled — and I grew up with that notion very much entrenched in my brain.

to this day, it still causes me huge problems, especially since I struggle to maintain a healthy size because of an inactive thyroid.

the feelings of self-loathing when I step on the scales to find that, inevitably, I’m the wrong side of my target weight, are sometimes overwhelming. Even now, aged 51, it triggers hot tears of shame, and also, at times, crushing low self-esteem.

the irony is that I’ve only myself to blame. Not because I am a terrible glutton — I’m not. But because, as a young woman, I put my body, and my metabolism, through hell trying to whittle it down to what I considered an acceptable size and, in so doing, set myself up for a lifetime of misery.

It is now well understood that crash dieting only leads to weight gain in the long run, since the body switches into starvation mode and becomes adept at preserving calories.

the more diets you do, the better it gets at this, until you only have to look at a piece of cake to put on weight.

But, back in the Seventies, this was not widespread knowledge, and, even if it had been, I would have had scant regard for any long-term health repercussions. All I cared about was getting into that size 10 Miss Selfridge dress.

For my 16th birthday, I remember, I was given a selfhypnosis weight- loss tape, which I listened to over and over again, to no avail.

then there was the ‘ apple’ diet, which involved replacing a meal a day with, yes, an apple. that was soon followed by the ‘ orange’ diet, also known as the Paris diet, owing to its popularity with super soignee French socialites (in essence, eat only oranges for a day a week). to facilitate this, a packet of Gauloises was always to hand.

Macrobiotics, cabbage soup, the Atkins, the Mayr (chewing soup in the Austrian Alps alongside some of the world’s top CEOS): I’ve tried them all.

Admittedly, I have never succumbed to the lure of a tapeworm or eating cotton wool, but, basically, dangle the notion of losing a stone in record time in front of me and I take leave of all my senses.

Ultimately, the message is clear: better to die of lung cancer, heart attack or liver failure than be fat. How bonkers is that?

EGG AND TOMATO By Jenni Murray

I honestly don’t know from where I got the idea — an edition of the then new, trendy magazine Cosmopolitan, probably — but drastic weight loss, after a lifetime of my mother’s and my grandmother’s cooking, had become an absolute requirement.

I’d just started at university, studying French and drama. Drama seemed to require looking ‘really good’ and I knew I was a bit on the chubby side to fit the bill.

It was late in the Sixties and model twiggy’s was the figure we all longed to emulate: long, skinny and flat- chested. I

vowed to do my best. The chosen regime consisted of black coffee (calories, zero), water (ditto) and one boiled egg and one tomato at each meal — calories negligible. It was all I ate for breakfast, lunch and dinner.

It was to be combined with as much exercise as possible. I did dance and yoga and walked or jogged absolutely everywhere.

I kept it up for months, often wondering why people turned away if I breathed my halitosis over them and thinking it strange that such a ‘healthy’ diet left me at risk of keeling over in a dead faint whenever we rehearsed Stravinsky’s The Rite Of Spring.

I never managed to look even remotely like Twiggy, whose skinniness was completely natural to her, whereas I had the bone structure of a rugby prop forward from which what was left of my flesh began to hang like a sack.

I was hollow- cheeked, deadeyed and beyond starving by the time a friend suggested I’d taken things a bit far and invited me out for a Chinese. I didn’t take much persuading, but found I could hardly manage more than a couple of mouthfuls of the sweet and sour pork and rice we were sharing.

It took a good while to persuade my stomach and my brain that food was essential nourishment and not some form of poison, and it was years before I could eat a boiled egg or a tomato again.

Even now, my stomach turns ever so slightly at a plate with a combination of items in red, yellow and white. when I haven’t been on one diet or another.

I’ve taken the sensible route (Weight Watchers; three meals a day; Paleo) — but I’ve also tried some incredibly daft ones, too.

I once decided to go old-school and limit myself to 1,000 calories a day. But, instead of using my calories sensibly, I decided to spend them on foods I enjoyed eating, such as Jaffa Cakes.

One day, I squandered my entire allowance on a tube of Jaffa Cakes (about 45 calories each) and two packs of pickled onion Monster Munch (110 each).

But, as every seasoned dieter knows, ‘beige’ foods are the work of the devil and must be avoided at all costs. Bread, chips, crisps and biscuits are no friend of the woman trying to lose weight.

However, while beige food may be off the menu, five years ago the purple food diet was all the rage.

The premise was simple: you could eat anything you wanted, as long it came in a purple hue.

Foods such as beetroot, grapes, aubergine, blueberries and red cabbage were all to be consumed in vast quantities.

The diet was designed to be done over the course of a fortnight. at the end of the two weeks, if you stuck to the plan, you could end up 7lb to 10lb lighter. For most women, that’s a dress size.

It got better still. Not only would you lose flab, you’d lose wrinkles, too, since purple foods are loaded with anti-ageing antioxidants.

With the lure of being able to shrink my muffin top and zip up my jeans, I gave it a whirl. The first week went swimmingly: I gamely tucked into plums and grapes and aubergine stew and felt my stomach getting flatter.

By the second week, I became a bit bored and wracked my brain for purple foods I hadn’t tried.

The most popular Quality Street only has a purple wrapper, as does Dairy Milk, so they were out . . . but purple wine gums? Surely they’d be OK? I mean, they had fruit in them, didn’t they? From there, I moved on to purple Smarties and Parma Violets.

Needless to say, I piled back on all the weight I lost in the first week — and ended the diet 2lb heavier than I started. WHEN it comes to losing weight, I’ve always taken the puritanical approach.

Forget atkins, 5:2, Dukan and the rest — the trick is to restrict the number of food groups you eat from. Choose a couple of things you can’t live without and live on only them for a bit.

Being heartsick helps, I’ve found. While most women react to being dumped with comfort eating, rejection sates my appetite.

So there I was, lovelorn at 30, hopelessly devoted to a man about whom I’d been ambivalent, up until the moment he told me our affair was over, and wondering if the little roll of flesh on my tummy was partly to blame.

When a girlfriend, in the hope of speeding up my cure, invited me to the south of France to the villa she was renting, I jumped at the chance. On the way there, I casually mentioned that I’d decided cashew nuts and vodka were going to be my staples for the next seven days.

We did a deal. She was always trying to lose weight herself and she’d indulge me as long as I agreed to eat salad, too, to help mop up some of the hard stuff.

Now, this is not a diet I would recommend to anyone, for obvious reasons including cirrhosis of the liver and sky-high cholesterol.

Raw cashews are good for you in moderation, but not the gigantic quantities of roasted, salted ones I consumed.

But staying topped up with vodka as I lazed by the pool lifted my spirits and helped me realise the man in question was totally wrong for me.

as for the cashews, I honestly do think they are my most favourite food, so in a way, I wasn’t depriving myself of anything. Seven days later, I was 7lb lighter.

When I went back to my job at Cosmopolitan magazine, everyone commented on how well I looked.

The irony was that my boss, who had recently read Susie Orbach’s ground-breaking anti- diet book Fat Is a Feminist Issue, had announced in my absence that she was banning the Dieter’s Notebook column from the magazine and all other diet features as well.

I decided at that moment never to share my brilliantly bonkers cashews and vodka diet with a living soul. Until now, that is.