Some US fat activists distinguish between ‘inbetweenies,’ who are relatively ‘small’ fat people who enjoy privileges such as ‘passing’ as thin or ‘on their way to being’ thin, and ‘death fats,’ who suffer the worst of the sanctions society places on fat people (McMichael, 2010).

Last week she had opened a door by mistake on a staircase in Bayswater and a woman in a tight black waspwaisted corset, pearls lolling between two great naked breasts, stood by a cage made of gold wire the size of a fourposter bed, in which were a dozen or so brilliantly fringed and tinted birds.

If I had learned anything that summer, other than Boy Scout stuff, it was that I needed to be the sexual hunter rather than the huntee.

To accommodate the expected visitors, a resort of “holiday villas” for a thousand guests was being planned for Nyingchi, near the upper end of the gorge, as well as a luxury hotel that will cater to the wealthy and powerful. Anticipating the tourist boom, business owners in Nyingchi prefecture formed a club dedicated to investigating reports that a “legendary wild man,’ presumably a yeti, inhabits the gorge.