ROLE models and heroes.

They light the way and prove it can be done. If we were all perfect, we would not need examples or mentors.

But many of us - your long-distance lawyer included - are sometimes weak or at least inconsistent. It is good to find people who show us that good standards can be reached.

I learned of a role model for overweight lawyers, a chap who has reshaped his physique and emerged from jolly fat bloke to slim and streamlined statesman.

Of whom do I speak?

Step forward Charlie Falconer - Lord Falconer to you and me.

A former senior minister in Tony Blair's government, this Labour peer and QC was everything you would imagine of a fat cat London lawyer.

I interviewed him in my BBC radio days. Whenever he appeared on TV in government or in opposition, he was a jowly, jolly, paunchy politician, with more wobble than a raspberry jelly. But no more.

Charlie has lost 5 stones. He is now 11st 5lb, and looks a million Euros. Indeed so drastic has been the physical change, when he was in the House of Lords promoting a bill to change the law on assisted dying, fellow peers assumed he must be suffering from some wasting disease. He has had to persuade them all is well, and reveal the secret of his success.

It turns out that he first took on the 5:2 diet in company with the Chancellor George Osborne, but soon designed his own regime.

This involved not having breakfast or lunch, but using apples to keep the pangs away until the evening.

This novel approach has been necessitated because there are so many lunches, dinners, nibbles and finger buffets in legal and political life in London, and he found it easier to Just Say No than try to moderate intake.

So far so good, but there was another crucial development, can you guess what's coming next? Yup, that's right, he took up running.

Now anyone seeing a picture of Lord Falconer in his blobbiness would drop their jaw at the thought of that bulk jogging round Hyde Park. But it just shows you what can be done if you are determined. Falconer now runs five miles at a time.

I said one other development, but there has been a further change. Dubbed Champagne Charlie for his love of the bubbles, Falconer has given up alcohol. He is saving himself huge numbers of calories by cutting out the booze.

There is one disadvantage - he has become addicted to diet cola, understandable but bad.

Nevertheless, that is something he can eventually dial back on, and a small price to pay so far for such a life-changing success in carving a new body.

I don't hold that we all need to be the same body shape;there is scope for variety, and there may be many legitimate reasons that someone is not a Greek god/dess. But I know about me - a middle-aged lawyer with a slightly addictive personality and the ability to forgive myself lots of things. I need to be regularly reminded that good health and physical improvement are not matters of easy choice. I must dig and struggle and hurt.

Yes, I can ask experts to encourage me, and of course ask the First Lady to give me my character - she's always willing to contribute that - but the best thing is peer example - this case from an actual peer of the realm.

Charlie Falconer is around my age (actually older at 62), works at the same kind of job, and has the temptations I do. He has done something that is well within my capabilities. I have so far achieved a fair amount in terms of fitness and weight, but he has exceeded me on the shape front, so that acts as both stick and carrot.

I want to be down at the 11s and 12s in terms of stones, so his example points the way. I am already cutting down on calories and counting up the miles - and even happy to cut further down on the booze while not replacing it with fizzy pop.

I said stick and carrot - for the former I would be embarrassed to lag behind a politician and lawyer seven years my senior, but the carrot is the more appealing.

I see what can be done, and I am determined to match him.

Lord Falconer is not my political hero - I am not party affiliated. But as an adult who has taken hold of his own circumstances and improved himself, I will seek to use this role model for my own gain. Or should that be loss?