Lying in his reinforced bed, 58-stone Keith Martin yesterday defended the estimated £50,000 a year he costs the taxpayer – by comparing himself to others who receive help, such as smokers or injured rock climbers.
Believed to be the world’s fattest man, the bed-bound 42-year-old cannot even roll over on his own.
He is visited by seven carers a day, who wash and change him in two shifts, plus two nurses every other day who tend to his bed sores.
Despite the huge drain on public funds, Mr Martin, who has been unable to work for more than a decade, said: ‘It’s either that or I would end up dead. Until people have lived like it, they can’t judge.
"Some people need help. Smokers get help, rock climbers get help if they get injured. Some people have bigger problems than others. "
‘I am trying to get my weight down. Hopefully it won’t be too long.’
He was a normal weight and used to enjoy cycling until his mother, Alma, died when he was 16. Then he began binge eating and drinking, and started to balloon from 12 stone to his current life-threatening proportions.
‘I let myself go,’ he said. ‘It wasn’t comfort eating, I just didn’t care. I got so bloated on sausages, bacon and roast dinners. I just ate whatever I felt like.’
His parents had separated when he was small. One of eight children growing up in Hendon, he rarely saw his father, Henry, a hospital porter, who passed away within a couple of years of his mother.
The teenage Keith left school soon after his mother’s death with a few CSEs and worked as a warehouseman and labourer until his weight, and the resultant lack of mobility and breathlessness, made it impossible.
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