It seems that as more and more people attain gargantuan portions, so problems have increased for emergency services called upon to treat and rescue them from incidents and accidents.

Between 2011 and 2015 around 1000 members of NHS staff were injured while treating obese patients.

As a result training is being introduced for fire and ambulance personnel using specially designed 25-stone mannequins – called Bariquins or BARRY for short.

The Bariquins, which each cost £4320 are so heavy they have to be broken into 15 separate parts to be moved around – with the main torso weighing 16kg.

Managing Director of the firm behind the scheme, Chris Jarratt, a former police officer who came up with the idea after he was faced with treating a 28-stone man, believes that dozens of the units will be snapped up as emergency staff struggle to deal with an increasing number of obese patents.

In the second hour of today’s programme, Margaret Mills returned to tell us the sad tale of what happened after the Toothill Windmill was struck by lightning during a violent storm in June 1829.

You can listen again here to what Margaret told me this afternoon: –

See you again next week,
Scott