Sweet singing in the choir

You won’t yet have made your New Year resolutions but one thing you might want to add to your list is Join a Choir. It’ll be much cheaper and so much less boring than going to the gym, and yet all that hard work breathing in the right places and struggling to hit top C or gravelling about in bottom G will pump up your cardiovasculars just as effectively. There’ll be no need to sign up for a post-Christmas diet because instead you’ll be learning how to strengthen your diaphragm (and what flops over it). And the challenge of hitting all those notes dead-on while standing in front of an audience of hundreds is enough to satisfy anyone’s hunger for competitive sport.

If you start right now, your choir might just be ready for the next BBC Radio Three Choir of the Year in 2008. Although I should not make it sound that simple.