New Year's resolutions were never built to last

Neris and India's Idiot-Proof Diet Cookbook, anyone? How about The Lemon Juice Diet ("lemon juice is the new cabbage soup")? Perhaps the pick of the bunch is by "Life Bitch, Steve Miller": Get Off Your Arse & Lose Weight. Now there's a ringing resolution. But has anybody ever kept a single New Year's resolution? Maybe. But not me.

I take comfort from the fact that not even such a hero as Dr Johnson could manage it. Again and again, Johnson resolved to do the simplest things in the year ahead. To get up by eight o'clock in the morning was his great ambition.

In his late fifties, he recorded in his journal: "I purpose to rise at eight because though I shall not yet rise early it will be much earlier than I now rise, for I often lye till two..." On the following New Year's Eve, he was able to boast of some success, having, or so he claimed, risen every morning that year by eight, or "at least, not after nine".

But the improvement didn't last. Near the end of his life, in his seventies, he was still desperately ordering himself: "To rise at eight, or sooner." It's the ever hopeful "or sooner" that gives him away.

It was perhaps Johnson that Samuel Beckett had in mind when, in Krapp's Last Tape, he portrayed an old man listening to the recorded resolutions of his much younger self - including a great vow to eat fewer bananas. "Fatal things for a man with my condition. Cut 'em out!" But we have already seen him, as soon as he comes on stage, get out a great big banana, stroke it fondly, peel it and eat it. And then slip on the skin.

Poor Johnson's other recurrent resolutions included keeping up his diary, putting his books in order, setting down at night some plan for the morrow, also known as making a list, and "to drink less strong liquours". I've tried them all myself.

Johnson kept making resolutions, of course, because he kept breaking them. Are resolutions useless then? Not at all. What they can usefully do for us is reveal how obdurate our own natures are. That's well worth knowing and could save us a bit of money on self-help books, too.

Towards the end of his life, Johnson remarked: "Every Man naturally persuades himself that he can keep his resolutions, nor is he convinced of his imbecility but by length of time, and frequency of experiment."

In its way, it's a concise review of all these manuals. Perhaps Waterstone's could save us all time by putting it on a sticky label on the covers instead of "three for two"?

As for myself, I'll be drinking less strong liquours. You bet. Luckily, I've never cared for bananas.