Medical Matters: The TV programme that gets the public moving has my vote

It starts just after the solstice. It’s a bit brighter in the mornings, the thrush tries a few notes from the garden hedge and one evening you see a hi-viz top in the distance. Then you see another one moving through the twilight with thick bare legs working vigorously underneath it. Soon they are everywhere.

Great droves of walkers, joggers and strugglers are moving through the spring evenings. They move in packs like sled dogs in a gold rush which was started by Operation Transformation, and the gold they seek is good health.

There is something un- Irish about it all, this exercise just to keep you fit. We are good at competitive sports all right, but when the body calls time, we tend to leave sport to the young lads and slowly deteriorate.

Let's face it, sitting on a bar stool watching Munster does your figure no favours.

Of course, there have always been lean and silent joggers pacing through our streets but these Operation Transformation groups are plump and cheerful, like a crowd of day trippers invading what was formerly once an exclusive holiday spot. For the price of a pair of trainers they are changing the dial.

Every doctor appreciates the values of systems. We dread the patient who tells you that he will try it his own way, as this usually means that he will forget about it until he finds himself back in your office. We know that if you want to lose weight or give up smoking, there are trusted methods that deliver results.

Identify targets
Some things work, some don't. The people at Operation Transformation know that if you set goals, identify targets and keep at it you will get your outcome.

The programme-makers have another system as well and it is the same one used in every TV drama from Coronation Street to Downton Abbey. They pick a group of characters, the punters get to know them, get fond of them and then watch them being put through desperate ordeals. The victims usually win through in the end.

The same formula is used in I'm a Celebrity . . . Get Me Out of Here, which shows famous people we had never heard of starve and eat worms and is now an essential ritual in our house.

But just as you don't get fit watching Munster, you don't get thin watching Celebrity (and you don't get beaten up watching Eastenders unless you watch it in a really rough pub when everybody else wants to watch the football).The great thing about Operation Transformation is that the public can join in.

I joined in a couple of years ago when I was one of a group of doctors testing blood sugars in a shopping centre for the programme. I knew all the doctors well, and I had never seen them in such nice clothes and hair-dos. We were looking better already.

Bit of a stunt
I thought it was a bit of a stunt until I took the first blood glucose which was 24, the level at which you would consider admission to hospital. The man had no idea he had diabetes. We diagnosed dozens of people with diabetes that day. These were all people who did not know that they had a problem.

They could now do something about their blood sugars, hopefully before they suffered organ damage.

I know there is an awful lot of crying in the programme: tears of despair, embarrassment, frustration and ultimately joy. I know that it must be quite an ordeal to tog out beside the elegant Kathryn Thomas, but ultimately I think that the programme is doing great work.

Jamie Oliver managed to draw attention to the unhealthy diets of British school kids in a TV programme that, according to The Lancet, had an incredible impact on public health. And let's face it, public health initiatives in Ireland need all the help it can get. But the great thing about Operation Transformation is that it is all mighty fun. The cameras show hundreds of people exhilarating in nothing more than getting out in the fresh air and using their bodies, and they seem to love it.

Operation Transformation aims to get 1,000 people off cigarettes this year and they will show hundreds of thousands more how to stop. As Eric Morecambe, a man who knew how to put on a good TV show, used to say "There's no arguing with that."

Pat Harrold is a GP in Tipperary