"Women are becoming fatter and they can only put so much weight on round their hips," says Dr Ian Campbell, president of the NOF. "After that, it accumulates on the abdomen, which makes them the same sort of shape as men."The risks of an apple-shaped body have been known for some years. However, research is beginning to explain why fat in this part of the body is more dangerous. It isn't the subcutaneous fat - the inch (or more) that you pinch - that causes the problems, but the visceral fat, stored deep in the abdomen around several major organs."Visceral fat behaves like an independent organ, and when it gets too large it begins to pump out fatty acids, which contain inflammatory and clot-producing compounds, into the bloodstream," explains Judy O'Sullivan, a cardiac nurse with the British Heart Foundation.

But if she has a small waist as well, she will be at far less risk of developing diabetes or heart disease in later life than someone with the same body weight and more fat round the waist," says Dr David Haslam, a GP and chairman of the National Obesity Forum. The statistics bear out his concern. Amid an overall increase in obesity - with one in three of us overweight and one in five clinically obese - women are posing particular concern. We have collectively put an inch on our waistlines every decade over the last half century, going from an average of 27in in the 1950s to 34in today. This season's catwalks feature "traditional womanly shapes, with nipped-in waists". But real women, it seems, no longer have the hourglass figures so magnificently displayed by the likes of Marilyn Monroe. Last month, the World Health Organization launched a campaign - Healthy Weight, Healthy Shape - in a new offensive to fight the pot belly "A pear-shaped woman may not be an ideal weight.

Norway and Italy have followed suit, and Scotland will bar smoking in workplaces from April. Nicola Carruthers, of the Federation of the Retailed Licensed Trade in Northern Ireland, said that Mr Woodward was using the province to test the implications of a smoking ban in England. She said that in rural Ireland pubs had lost 20 to 30 per cent of trade and 400 pubs had closed.. British women undergoing fertility treatment are being denied the best chances of success because of strict government controls on the number of embryos that can be implanted at one time, critics say. The warning came as new research found that live birth rates from fertility treatment were more than 10 per cent higher in the United States than in Britain.. The ban brings Northern Ireland into line with the Irish Republic, which became the first European country to impose a ban in March 2004.