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'Fatty Lawson'

to unveil

slim secrects

LONDON: Britain's former finance minister, Nigel Lawson, has found a new career -- as a slimming guru, a newspaper reported on Sunday.

Once known as "Fatty Lawson" for his imposing stature, the former Chancellor of the Exchequer has lost more than 56 lbs (25 kgs) in under a year after prompting from his wife.

Now the 63-year-old Lawson -- who weighed more than 280 lb (127 kg) at his peak -- is to unveil the secrets of his weight-reducing regime in a diet book, the Sunday Times said.

The Nigel Lawson Diet is likely to come out in paperback with "before and after" photographs of the author, it said, quoting his literary agent Michael Sissons.

Lawson -- who the newspaper said earned 250,000 pounds ($400,800) from his political memoirs -- was finance minister for six years during Margaret Thatcher's premiership until he resigned dramatically in 1989 over policy differences.-Reuter