The Wii Fit Plus: a computer game the Government wants you to play

The first computer game with the explicit endorsement of the Department of Health has just hit the shops. It is called the Wii Fit Plus and is meant to enable you to achieve a sylph-like figure without removing your eyes from the screen. And it comes with the opposite of the Government Health Warning on your fag packet.

I derive this information from my younger son, just short of his twenty-first birthday and possibly the world’s leading expert on these devices. He is very much the target market for the Wii Fit Plus, weighing seventeen stone (but then so do I, and he’s taller). It shows you various exercises to do, and – this is the innovative bit – you wear some sort of attachment on your body, so that the machine knows whether or not you are doing them correctly, and precisely how many calories you are burning off, encouraging you with word and demonstration the while. If this sounds rather reminiscent of Winston Smith and the telescreen in the opening chapter of 1984, do remember that so far it is all entirely voluntary, and you can tell it to sod off just like you do the lady on the satnav.

Let’s not brood too long over what future Harriet Harmans might make of it. It sounds a bit sad, but I can see there is something to be said for it, if one is a fitness fan doomed to live under sodden English skies, or else too grossly fat to risk being seen in public in one’s sports gear.

However, the idea of an endorsement by the Government is rather a new departure. (Though I can’t help fearing that in the current political situation that may be rather a kiss of death.) Let us hope that (pause to look up name) Mr Andy Burnham is seen disporting himself with his Wii on public service advertising in the run-up to Christmas. And the mind boggles at whatever other government departments may jump on the bandwagon. Encourage Pocket-money Prudence with an Alistair Darling Piggy-bank. Or what about a sustainable Christmas tree graced with an angelic Ed Miliband? One thing is certain: any military toys endorsed by the Ministry of Defence will have fallen apart by Boxing Day.