Post #2349629

★★☆☆☆ — "More Chai Than Chi" Bert Horrobin's Tai Chi with Chai Tea arrives as perhaps the least likely wellness publication since Keith Richards' Guide to Clean Living. Bert, Ambridge's answer to a man who has spent decades treating his body as a compost heap, invites us to join him in the ancient art of Tai Chi — pausing every third page, one suspects, to light a cigarette off the previous one. The photographs are ambitious, if occasionally alarming; the "White Crane Spreads Its Wings" pose appears to have been captured mid-stumble, and the "Parting the Wild Horse's Mane" chapter is inexplicably accompanied by a recipe for a full fry-up. The chai tea element is a masterstroke of false advertising, given that Bert's preferred beverage throughout is something considerably stronger and served at The Bull. To his credit, the chapter on breathing exercises is genuinely moving — largely because the reader spends it quietly worrying about him. A book that somehow manages to be both an affront to holistic health and a quietly heroic act of optimism. Bert Horrobin: not in great shape, but giving it a bloody good go.