Peter Kay makes candid weight loss admission amidst fat jab speculation

Comedian Peter Kay has candidly opened up on his dramatic weight loss, which led to speculation he had resorted to using injections or a gastric band to shift the pounds. The funyman has been looking a shadow of his former self in recent times and at an In Conversation With . . . event hosted by Sara Cox at The Lowry Theatre in Salford, he revealed his complicated relationship with food and dieting. While he stopped short of detailing exactly how he lost the weight, the 52-year-old confessed he had been on a diet for "48 years".

He told the broadcaster: "I had to (lose weight), eventually, because you start thinking about your health and things like that, don't you?" I tried everything. Good God in heaven. I mean, you go to flaming weight-loss groups and stuff like that. I joined Slimming World and WeightWatchers. I did all of them," he confessed in the discussion, which will be broadcast at a later date on BBC Radio 2.

He admitted he had a wake up call during a visit to the cinema in Bolton with his wife Susan several years ago. Hit by a hunger pang he told his wife he was going to the bathroom but instead went to buy a hotdog.

"I was doing really well with this diet, but I'm so bad with willpower. I had this hot dog and I caught a glimpse of myself reflected in, ironically, a framed poster for Babe.

"I thought, look at you - what are you doing? You're doing really well on this diet; you should be ashamed of yourself. And I got it and threw it in the bin - and just as it was about to hit the binliner, I grabbed it and still ate it," he recalled.

The star also revealed that his bad habits and unhealthy relationship with food date back to his childhood. He remembers how his mother, Deirdre, would get a meat pie from the market when he was in his pram, and he would then sit there eating it.

Things didn't get any better when he started school. "My mum used to bring pies in for me at primary school. She'd go in and she'd say to the dinner ladies, 'Can you give this to Peter?'" he said. "Everyone would be queueing up and the dinner ladies would be like, 'Your mum's been in with a pie'."

However, Peter said his mother's attitude has now changed. Rather than feeding everybody, she now worries about people who are carrying a few extra pounds. "My mum is obsessed with people being overweight and she proper judges everybody by it.

"I'm like, 'Mum, what does it matter how big people are?'. Because she really does judge everyone by how big they are. She's like, 'I think they'd better be careful'.

"She used to hide the biscuits in our house, but I knew where she'd hid them. I used to have me mates round for a brew and I'd reach inside the tumble drier and get a packet of digestives out, like it was normal," he said.