Workers across Britain will this week celebrate "Email-Free Friday" - an initiative promoted by Sport England's Everday Sport campaign to encourage the desk-bound to get off their fat arses and circulate around their work environments with calorie-burning enthusiasm.

The reason is simple: emails make you fat. Long gone are the days when employees would run breathlessly to the human resources department to tell all and sundry that Tracy from accounts had been caught in the stationery cupboard administering sexual favours to Dave from transport - now it's all done electronically* and our waistlines are suffering as a result.

Experts reckon that upping activity levels by 10 per cent could save 6,000 lives and, crucially, £500m a year. The Observer cites the example of Phones 4U, where top dog John Caudwell has "banned his 2,500 staff from using email in the office". He explained: "We have email paralysis. If you have a cancer, you have to cut it out."

So there you have it. Accordingly, don't bother to finish reading this piece, resist the temptation to email it to a colleague and sprint as fast as you can to the lobby where you can tell your fellow smokers how much fitter you're feeling while puffing on a Silk Cut. Your heart and your waistline will thank you for it. ®

Bootnote

*We mean the dissemination of information, naturally. We have no doubt sexual favours are still administered personally in stationery cupboards across the UK, and quite right too.

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