Well, thanks 2007. It's been jolly spanking good fun knowing you. For me at least, it's not been a bad year. But I find myself entering 2008 with more resolve than ever to "do something about my fitness".

This won't be the first time I've made New Year's Resolutions, and it most certainly won't be the first time when I break them. But as part of my on-going midlife crisis, I've finally acknowledged that I'm in pretty awful shape and that I need to do something about it as a matter of urgency.

This leaves me in the rather annoying position of contemplating becoming what those in the leisure industry refer to as January Joiners; the people who suddenly wake up on New Years day as born again health fanatics and head off to JJB to buy arm-fulls of sports gear which will soon find their way to eternity in the cupboard under the stairs. I suppose my one saving grace is that I can't actually afford to join a gym. At least not without missing out on other luxuries in life, such as the unlimited supply of chocolate and beer which the local supermarket delights in supplying me with

But enough really is enough. I've reached a kind of tipping point where I simply must do something about the state of my health. But is it really just a coincidence that I've arrived at this momentous occasion right at the end of 2007? Of course not. I'm just as much a sheep as everyone else. the only real difference is that I let that fact bother me more than most do.

There's good money to be made from the likes of me at New Year. Check out the adverts on ITV and you'll see dozens of commercials for fitness videos, nicotine patches, weight loss plans, healthy cereal. I used to know some cool data on the amount of slimming products the USA got through in a year, but I'm sure you could google it if you really cared enough about the figures.

So the big question is - why? What's so special about the end of December and the beginning of January that makes so many of us sheep examine our lives and decide it's time to make the big changes? Surely, if we were that clever in the first place we'd never wait for some magical calendar moment to get on with something that should be just part of our lives anyway. And the temporary insanity doesn't stop there. This New Year I've taken up the Ukulele as well. So if anyone wants a barely used uke, I'm sure I'll have given mine up by February. I'll swap it for a pair of extra huge jeans, which I'll need after I fall off the exercise wagon and put off doing something about my ever widening form for yet another chilly night with Jools Holland.