If you want to get ahead in the world and you’re a beleaguered bloke, then it’s time to start munching the crunchy carrot.
Not the Camberwell Carrot made infamous by Richard E Grant in Withnail & I, however, but the humble, ground-dwelling orange variety that has been known to help your eyesight for many a year.
It turns out its visionary powers are not its only gift. The common or garden carrot can help men live longer, reverse the effects of ageing, and actually help ugly men attract members of the opposite sex.
Now, Guru is not advocating getting out your glowing orange stick and waving it about saying: ‘Look at the size of my carrot’ – although if you feel that way inclined, who is Guru to judge. But if you have a tendency to go out with a bag on your head, perhaps the carrot diet is for you.
Apart from the obvious um benefit of making habitual eaters orange, boffins at Glasgow and Exeter universities have found that animals use the pigments in carrots to make themselves more colourful to attract mates.
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Guru suggests that many middle-aged men have already been doing this for some time. For although they have clearly been failing to take advantage of the potential of the carrot – except for the clearly carotenoidal David Dickinson – plenty of washed-up, grey, 40-somethings have been trying to brighten themselves up by buying loud shirts, brightly coloured sports cars and motorbikes, and generally trying to make themselves more ‘interesting’.
Invariably, this fails miserably every time. So perhaps it’s worth taking a trip to your local green grocers to buy half a hundredweight of gnarled root vegetables.