When his New Year resolutions are crashing around him like chandeliers in an earthquake, the last thing a man needs or wants is someone preaching at him.

If, foolishly, he has boasted to the world that he has intended to start the new Millennium with a new fitness regime - spurred on by all those pictures in glossy magazines of muscled twerps - but instead has succumbed to the pleasures of 20 fags, ten pints of Belgian lager and a curry carrying a health warning, then no man wants to listen to a lecture on how he should be improving his health.

Despite the nasty rash of magazines on the market which preach fitness, gym visits and moderation at every turn, most men tend to ignore their health and hope for the best. You'd have a better chance of catching most of us (mistakenly) in a ladies' toilet than (deliberately) in a doctor's waiting room.

Granted, this probably has more to do with sheer, naked terror than with blatant macho posturing - to many of us, the words, "The doctor will see you now" sound about as inviting as "Any last requests?"

And then of course if we do get ill, we whine like coyotes being neutered with a rusty knife.

Men make the worst patients, but with a little patience, it is possible to keep a check on our health without adopting the lifestyle of a Trappist monk, or bothering the doctor un- necessarily. Help is at hand, in the form of a new book from Oxford University Press.

And guess what? It's all about DIY - Diagnose It Yourself. Written by GPs Keith Hopcroft and Alistair Moulds, A Bloke's DIY Guide To Health encourages us to "Live Fast, Die Old" by checking ourselves over whenever we feel a bit dodgy.

Helpful step by step flowcharts make it easy to spot the difference between alcohol/dietary indiscretion - ie, too much booze and spicy grub - and a subarachnoid haemorrrhage, which basically means you are in a bad way, my friend, and a visit to the doctor is highly advisable.

Both doctors Hopcroft and Moulds describe themselves as "blokes", which means that their book is written in a realistic, non-preachy way. They accept that most of their fellow blokes live fairly unhealthy lives and are unlikely to change.

They also accept that most blokes will not visit a doctor, whatever is wrong. And best of all, they guarantee that their book is completely free of pictures of sun-tanned men lifting weights, sun-tanned men drinking fruit juice, and sun-tanned men eating healthy meals. Bravo.

That sort of stuff is enough to make you ill, straight off.

And interestingly, the authors cite a reason which is never mentioned about why men don't go to doctors: we don't need to. In blokes between 15-50, the vast majority of symptoms, they claim, are nothing much to worry about - they either go away on their own or they're irrelevant.

Of course, they also point out that occasionally, a lump or a pain ignored will be a lump or a pain that should have been seen to.

By and large, though, by following the instructions, it is easy enough to work out whether you should see your GP or just take a couple of pain-killers.

Similarly, the chapter on Odd Behaviour contains the reasons to be cheerful as well as the reasons to be actively seeking help, pronto. If you are a diabetic, for example, acting strangely may be a perfectly justifiable way of expressing the hypoglycaemia you are suffering from. On the other hand, you might be a High Court judge, or more seriously, suffering from organic brain syndrome. This, you will be glad to discover, is very rare.

Between them, Hopcroft and Moulds have produced something which is genuinely helpful and amusing, as well as being informative.

The idea that the initials GP stood for Great Power (Who Knows Everything) is blown down (and not before time) by their honesty. In a section with the decidedly blokeish title of 'How to get a good seeing to', they spell out the Do's and Don'ts of visiting the doctor if you really must, and sooner or later, even the most ardent avoidance-merchants among we blokes really must. So, look and learn. Do not say, "I don't come here often, so I've brought a list." As the authors explain, the average GP has about nine minutes to spend on each patient, so they won't appreciate your going to them with a job lot of symptoms. Do not say, "I've got toothache" - he's a doctor, dummy, and you should be at the dentist. Don't try to impress them with psuedo-medicalspeak, either.

You will only hack them off. As the book points out, "I've got a chronic pain in my solar plexus, Doc," is wide-open to misrepresentation, as well as bordering on being meaningless.

A chronic pain is a pain that has been going on for a long time. Not one you woke up with this morning. And a solar plexus? According to the book, "God (let alone mere GPs) knows where this really is." Another wonderful chapter is headed "Odd Behaviour" which you would be well advised not to read on public transport, as your fellow commuters will think you very odd indeed when you start to laugh out loud. One part, for example, deals with psychosexual problems and concludes, "What is regarded as 'abnormal' depends on your partner, society and the law."

Quite.

In all, this is a book women should buy for their men, if only to stop them whining about their ailments. Or men, of course, could buy it on the quiet.

Bloke, heal thyself.

Story date: Friday 24 December

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.