[Omah]

- in fact, it was a dodgy thyroid

‘I didn’t just feel tired, I was totally drained, as if I was running on empty. I had no energy at all,’ says Shaun. ‘I was just dragging myself around.

‘I thought it was just the demands of a young family or my age catching up with me, especially as my memory wasn’t good either. I would walk into the kitchen and forget why I had gone in there.’

He’d also put on weight — despite starting a ‘real health kick’ four years earlier — which he began when he started to develop middle-age spread. His hedonistic days were truly over.

‘I got down to 13st — I’m 5ft 9in so that was about right. However, later that year the weight started to pile back on.

‘I put on a couple of stone, even though I was not doing anything differently. My hair was thinning and my eyebrows fell out. I thought I’d just have to learn to live with it.’

But it wasn’t middle age or his past that was Shaun’s problem, it was an underactive thyroid gland — and it was diagnosed only by chance.

Lucky Shaun .....