Frank Talking: Tall and slim, or short and fat?

Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky and British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak walk outside Number 10 Downing Street in London. | ANDY RAIN

Frank LeaversPalma24/07/2023 14:48

What do British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, Russian President Vladimir Putin, and Ukrainian President Zelensky have in common? Forgive me for my coarseness, but these three chaps are all short-arses i.e. all of them are just 5ft 7in tall in old money. Yes, admittedly I am being somewhat selective in my choice of senior politicians and there vertically challenged demeanours, but once I started checking on the relative heights of politicians past and present it was/is really surprising how many are below average in terms of physical stature. For instance Winston Churchill was just 5ft 6in tall and postwar British Prime Minister, Clement Attlee, was only an inch or so higher. Happily this phenomenon is not just a British things as I am pleased to report that current French President, Emmanuel Macron, is only marginally taller than his predecessor, Napoleon Bonaparte, who was disappointingly short at 5ft 5inches whilst the victor at The Battle of Waterloo i.e. The Duke of Wellington, was apparently a very lanky aristocrat.

I don’t know why I am quite so fascinated by these physical traits, but being short of stature in politics doesn’t seem to be a fact that might hold a person back in the cutthroat world of that particular calling, now does it? Interestingly, the historian Anthony Seldon believes that politicians tend to be shorter than you might imagine because “Shorter people are usually anxious to assert themselves, affirming the extra need to distinguish themselves and turbocharging their egos to compensate for their lack of height.” I must say that I find that theory somewhat fanciful but who knows?

In thinking about all this, I do wonder where my fascination in this regard comes from - could it be that I am vertically challenged myself; I don’t think so, but you never know do you? However, although at one time I would like to exaggerate my height to potential girlfriends - as in claiming that I was 6ft tall - whereas in reality I just about made 5ft 11 inches on a good day upon tippy-toes. Moreover, as I am moving forward quickly apace years-wise, I appear to be shrinking slightly, and it was just yesterday that a woman of my close acquaintance remarked that I am developing a slight stoop, further limiting my fairly obvious sex appeal I fear. There is no doubt that over the generations men and women have grown taller for all sorts of reasons - but I’d like to leave you with this observation whilst living here in the United Kingdom. There is one thing you do notice upon arriving here, that being - putting a persons height to one side, the number of people who are grossly overweight is unmistakable; much more than in Mallorca for instance.

In saying this, I don’t mean slightly chubby or even “big-boned” as my mum used to say, but dangerously large. In past centuries it was the rich who ate too much and never exercised, causing them to lumber around clumsily. Nowadays it seems that the exact opposite is true - the well-off like to show-off their svelte, some would say skinny bodies, whilst the poor and disadvantaged in the UK can’t afford to eat good nourishing food and so become heavy and bloated. It maybe that I am wrong in all this, indeed some would say that I am being nasty to even mention this as it could be seen as ‘fat shaming’ but it isn’t - just an honest observation of a social reality.