TV Scope: Ian Wright's Unfit Kids, Channel 4, Wednesdays, 9pm
How can you disrupt a training session if you are not actually there? The question is asked, with the erring logic of a young teenager, by Yusuf who is missing fitness classes for tackling his obesity problem.
Yes, we are back in obesity-land. Ian Wright's Unfit Kids is one of that blizzard of programmes about obesity which you can expect to crowd your TV screens from now on.
This was the first of a three-part series in which Wright, former Arsenal football star, tries to help eight 13-year-old obese kids from north London to reach normal weight and fitness levels.
They include kids like Robert who is almost 10 stone overweight and has four television sets in his bedroom, which is impressive in a perverse sort of way.
And then there is Yusuf. Wright visits Yusuf at home to complain that he is the disrupting the programme by not turning up for all the sessions and by his carry-on when he does appear. That's when Yusuf points out that he cannot disrupt something if he isn't actually present at it.
Wright ignores that one and then Yusuf's mum smilingly lists all the orchestra rehearsals which prevent Yusuf from turning up for his fitness training. So Wright calls a meeting of parents to ask for more co-operation. It is Yusuf's mum who asks how he can expect kids who hate physical exercise to put in an effort?
And when Wright ambushes the parents by insisting that they themselves do a fitness session in the gym, it is Yusuf's mum who declares that she has a broken ankle and a broken knee. She even pulls up the leg of her trousers to illustrate her claim but her leg looks perfectly normal to the viewer.
Wright ignores this nonsense and it turns out that Yusuf's mum is perfectly well able to run around the gym. Another mum hides rather than take part in anything that involves physical exercise. This mum is obese and has an obese teenage son. She declares that she is going to get a note from her doctor confirming that she has a medical condition which prevents her from exercising.
Ian Wright is learning the hard way that there is more to obesity than stuffing your face. Sitting in your room watching television or playing computer games and emerging only to eat more rubbish is one way to avoid facing life's scary challenges.
And these kids seem scared at the notion of exercising, especially under the baleful eye of Wright, a man not cut out for a career in the diplomatic service.
It is also by no means clear that these particular kids or, indeed, some of the parents, are actually willing to do what it takes to get their weight down to normal. Perhaps this is the nub of the problem. You can bark all you like about obesity and about the wicked fast-food industry but obese people will only eat less and exercise more if they really, really want to.
And "eat less, exercise more" is a pretty unattractive proposition in itself for most of us, obese or not.
Moreover, scary messages about diabetes and dying early just won't work with teenagers who think they will live forever. Instead, the health promotions people are going to have to sell the benefits of normal weight and normal fitness.
Will TV programmes like this one help? Perhaps, though I wonder if they are also going to lead to obese people being picked on at school and in the workplace.
Changing eating habits is very difficult and involves a great deal more than tut-tutting by the media. And in tomorrow night's episode, Wright is going to find out just how difficult it can be.
Padraig O'Morain is a counsellor accredited by the Irish Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy.