These include some reassuringly familiar types, such as the heroic pragmatist (Thomas Jane), the consoling schoolteacher (Laurie Holden), the finger-pointing nutcase (Marcia Gay Harden), and the skeptic (Andre Braugher) who refuses to believe in giant, writhing flesh-eaters right up to the moment at which he meets them socially.

NEWYORKER: The Mist

But there might be an even more animalistic explanation why a cloudless sky buoys us up: "When it's good weather there's much more flesh on show, which cheers most people up, " says Dr Workman.

BBC: Call that a summer?

True spent the money to flesh out a song she had made up, pairing a hazy piano-based instrumental with girly, breathless vocals.

BBC: Andrea True, who sang More More More, dies aged 68

But if the funding or data scandals deepen, Mr Brown may yet be forced to offer up a pound of ministerial flesh.

ECONOMIST: Bagehot

And to know that you are right there in the flesh, it just - it fires me up - inspires me, really.

NPR: Carly Simon's 'Never Been Gone'

Albert is a woman dressed as a man, in the Ireland of the late eighteen-hundreds, yet what Close serves up is neither man nor woman, flesh nor fowl, but a strange hieratic hybrid of no discernible identity.

NEWYORKER: Material Girls

The reason reversing such gains is hard is that servicing this extra flesh means a person's maintenance diet (the food required to keep his body ticking over) creeps up with his weight and so does his appetite.

ECONOMIST: The difficulty of losing weight is captured in a new model