Around three quarters of people aged 45-74 are overweight or obese. Exercise, as Scarlett McNally, an orthopaedic surgeon from Eastbourne has told us, is a ‘magic pill’; but it is a pill we have to remember to take if it is to have any effect . One of the best ways to get people to exercise is to make it functional – that is, something we do without thinking because it’s the easiest possible way of doing something. I don’t have a car so the simplest way of getting to Portslade, even in that biting cold, was to get on my bicycle.