Markedly svelte actress and former photographic model Joanna Lumley has spoken out about why so many people are overweight, relaying some controversial arguments around the subject.

The 66-year-old Ab Fab star believes people get fat nowadays simply because they’re greedy ‘fools’ who gorge on cupcakes and chocolate.

Remarkably though, rather than advocating exercise, she dubs it ‘offensive’ and claims eating copious amounts of lettuce is a better route to a slim figure like hers.

Speaking ahead of an auction in London yesterday, Lumley said: “Lots of people nowadays are too greedy. People think ‘I must have a cupcake’. What do you mean you must? You’ll get fat, you fool. People are too fat because they eat all the stuff in front of them. They think, ‘I want a bit of choccie’, and you think, ‘No, don’t have it you fool’.”

And Lumley’s solution to the growing obesity epidemic? “People don’t need dieting books. They should just stop eating so much. There is nothing else to be said.”

Continuing, she added her take on exercise: “It’s mainly because I’m vegetarian and don’t gorge myself. On a typical day I eat lettuce, followed by some lettuce, with lettuce. I don’t exercise at all. I don’t go to gyms, but I do rush about. I don’t like exercising. I find it offensive.

“People pay money to go and walk on the spot. It disgusts me actually. Go and pick up litter instead. Go and paint an old woman’s house. I find gyms oppressive and frightening.”

Lumley went on to highlight that fact that people have gradually gotten fatter and fatter since the end of post-war rationing in the 1950s: “In the last war people were thin because they ate damned all. They had to walk everywhere. They didn’t expect so much. There wasn’t a culture of self-gratification.”

Let the team at Talent Management know your take on Lumley’s rather blunt comments…is she speaking the cold, hard truth or are her words a naïve take on a subject she knows little about?