Nostalgic Workout

There are many forms of exercise around and a myriad ways for fatties to shift the pounds. The problem with exercising though, is that it’s always been arse-crunchingly boring, which is why people are always coming up with novel ways to detract from the fact that you’re actually exercising at all by marrying it with another physical activity.

The naming convention for these hybrid activities often involves nothing more than the unceremonious mashing together of the name of the desired activity, and the second and third syllables of the word “exercise”; hence: dancercise and boxercise (fittingly, there was an on the wall of the caff in Albert Square the other day for an activity called fightercise).

However, not all activities lend themselves to a hybridisation of two verbs, as exemplified by a local advert I saw the other day offering classes in “pole-da-cise” which just sounds weird. I assume it’s something to do with the current appeal of pole dancing. Applying the strict linguistic rules above, it should theoretically be called polercise, which sounds as if it might be something to do with Arctic exploration (when spoken, not spelled obviously).

The prerequisite for these new forms of getting fit is obviously some kind of physical activity: you couldn’t, for example, readercise or drivercise, but you could, in theory, spelunkercise or even scrumpercise.

To my knowledge, no one’s trademarked either of these yet, so watch for my Scrumpercise DVD – out in time for Christmas – in which I can be seen dressed in a tweed leotard, scaling the fences of orchards across Britain and pilfering apples before being chased by angry farmers with sticks in scenes reminiscent of a bygone age of innocent juvenile thievery.