Getting one's just desserts

I decided on the creme brulee. After the entree of Alaskan crab and the prime eye fillet (pan-seared and rare) for the main, with a ratatouille gratin and a mixed green salad for sides, I felt it only fitting that I have pud.

After all, what is a flash dinner at a flash Queenstown restaurant without some fireworks at the end? "You're not really going to eat that?" said one of my dining companions, an Australian whom I suspected to be as vain as he was good looking.

"Of course I am," I said as I engaged in one of life's little joys, tap-tap-tapping the brulee's caramelised crust with my spoon until it cracked. "That's really bad for you," he continued in a tone suggesting I must be a total cretin and utterly unaware that something made with cream and eggs might have had to sacrifice being salubrious so that it was, well, to die for. I put the first spoonful in my mouth.

At this point the Australian got up from the table and disappeared. I cannot be certain whether it was a protest. I really hope it was. I had a little protest myself - at his gall, you understand - by finishing every last velvety, delicious globule, smacking my lips as I went.

As I pushed back my chair, and sat there gently rubbing my stomach and contemplating whether I should release my belt a notch, I began wondering: when, exactly, did it become socially acceptable to pass judgment on other people's food choices?

Indeed, is it now de rigueur for even complete strangers - I'd met the Australian two days before and will never meet him again - as well as friends and relatives to curl a lip and castigate you for choosing something that they themselves would not contemplate ingesting?

I have long held the term "political correctness" to be bosh. It is, except among the mentally enfeebled, an absolutely meaningless phrase that disguises a contempt for others' views, proclaims a desire to shut down debate and a wish for a black and white world full of certainty but little reflection. It other words, it's bollocks.

However, I couldn't help speculating, as I sat at that restaurant table, whether I had just been the subject of something which might be called - for want of a better phrase - "food correctness".

This is what had happened: from my point of view, I'd worked up a hearty appetite in the great outdoors, had decided on a full meal, including a deliciously creamy dessert, and had eaten it with great satisfaction. It wasn't like I was some fat bastard with a pacemaker who'd ordered a gross of cheeseburgers. But from the Australian's chair I had made a completely inappropriate food choice which he did not hesitate to point out - the subtext being that, in all probability (and, no doubt, if he had his way), it should and would condemn me to an early, far from surprising and entirely deserved death at the hands of lardy arteries. And so what if it does?

Why should my possibly premature demise be of any concern to anyone but myself? If I wish to go purple, clutch my chest and expire face down in a fatty pud, is that not my own business? Evidently not. The Food Correctness brigade have made my business their business and will be tut-tutting as they read this. Here's what they'll be thinking: how dare I consider them a bunch of meddling, self-righteous, intolerant wowsers when they're simply trying to help me help myself.

Why am I not doing as they and all "sensible" people are doing: engaging in a low-fat-high-fibre-low-meat-high-fruit-low-alcohol-high-exercise-low-risk-high-smugness lifestyle? It occurred to me that these people are now everywhere. They're the ones who spend every waking hour watching every mouthful, use their weekends to run double marathons, walk around with a bottle of water affixed to a hand like some overgrown toddler, lose sleep about finishing one glass of wine, develop asthma at the very idea of inhaling second-hand smoke, have an up-to-date mole map, drink only herbal tea, understand what the hell GI and BMI are, read the nutrition labels on everything, consider cheese to be no better than smegma, blanch at the thought that butter is still legally available, are probably vegetarian but if not cut every scrap of fat of what little meat they eat and will not, on any account, no matter how thirsty they are, drink anything so appalling as a Coke.

We kid ourselves that we live in a largely secular country. Well here's the news: we don't. Among the chattering classes I have the misfortune to associate with, health, or more correctly, good health, has become the hardline, fundamentalist religion du jour. It's a demanding faith, requiring a strict, monastic self-denial. Its liturgy is performed in health clubs everywhere. Its Holy Writs are Healthy Food Guide, New Zealand Fitness and the laughably utopian Good - though of course you are under no circumstances allowed to titter about the faith or show disrespect for its dogma, as I discovered at a recent barbecue.

In a conversation which began, for no apparent reason, with an inquiry as to my eating habits, I had suggested - perhaps tastelessly, but in jest - that I did not wish to have a poor and pathetic old age and had a cunning plan. To avoid such a prospect I had decided to embark on a vigorous campaign of smoking (I do) and drinking (ditto) in the next two decades so as to guarantee I would not have to worry about a penniless, pitiable old age at all. Death would save me from it.

After I'd said all this, I paused. There was an uncomfortable silence where I thought there really ought to be a small laugh. But then the Spanish Inquisition didn't have much of a sense of humour either. Meanwhile, the po-faced faithful gather at gyms here and juice joints there to admire themselves in mirrors and disdain those of us who don't believe. But what is the point of their religion? What is its heaven, its Canaan, its happy hunting ground? Well if our dear old obsolete Christian God offered eternal life, the new religion seems to promise (but not guarantee, you understand) the rather less perpetual gift of long life.

Living long has become the Western obsession, of course, along with trying to appear like you're not ageing at all by engaging in endless rounds of Botox shots, tummy tucks and bum lifts. But what exactly are all these bootlickers at the altar of good health and vanity actually wanting to live longer for?

So that they'll be around to be mooched off by their kids and grandkids for another decade? Or maybe they want to see what an iPod looks like in the year 3000? Or do they want to hang around to find out whether there actually will be an end to the "war" on terror? Or do they have to get to the end of a 35-page bucket list? Or is it the belief that they are such valuable, unique and utterly irreplaceable members of the human race that they must hang on for as long as possible for the benefit of the species?

Actually it really is hard to imagine why anyone would put in such effort to gain a few more years (or possibly none at all) at the wrong end of life. Whatever the reason, their hoped-for longevity would appear to require such a dreary, austere and oppressive regime of diet and exercise that it beggars belief that anyone who has an ounce of joie de vivre would volunteer to take part.

It is, however, their choice. They are free to take it - and I should be free to order whatever the hell I like without being subjected to a chorus of tut-tutting. Personally, I'm prepared for what used to be called one's dotage: a result of ageing naturally, culminating in what will probably be an unpleasant and painful last act which will be terminated by conking out altogether - all as the Good Lord intended. It ain't pretty, but at least I will be able to look back and say I wasn't afraid to have a bit of fun, order a dessert, buy another packet of fags and ask for a drop more wine.

If there is any answer to all these hordes of Food Correctness bores sucking down their low-fat, decaf lattes while jogging on the spot for half the day, it was best summed up in a scene from the excellent 1990s drama Cracker, in which Robbie Coltrane's Fitz was queried about his particular passions in life.

"Why do you drink so much?" someone asked him. "I like it," said Fitz. "And smoke so much?" "I like it." "And you gamble as well?" "Yes. I like it." Here endeth the lesson. Now shut up and let me finish my brulee.