IF January is the month for making and breaking new year’s resolutions, then many of us will have vowed to lose weight and yielded to a takeaway by now.

I’ve steered clear of fish, chips and burgers – but there has been a pizza.

However since last January I have succeded in cutting back in some areas, and it seems to have made a noticeable difference. My belt comes in an extra notch these days.

There’s still room for improvement. But we all feel that way. We all have our physical imperfections – whether a few extra pounds, the onset of wrinkles, an unsightly mole, scar or birthmark, a nose you reckon is too big, too much hair in one place or too little somewhere else. And we’ll notice them more than most other people do.

We’ll tend to overlook our good points, physical or otherwise, but we should count our blessings. And I’m grateful I’m tall.

On the whole it seems to be a good thing – though I have been known to bang my head on a few low doorways in Cumbrian historical properties.

I’m six feet and three quarters of an inch, or six feet one in my heels. And this week I learnt that I’m seven inches taller than the prime minister.

Rishi Sunak stands at five feet six – and is our shortest male prime minister since Winston Churchill.

He’s also one of the shortest of either sex. Theresa May is two inches taller than him and Liz Truss and Margaret Thatcher were both just one inch shorter.

Other premiers of recent years have mostly been quite tall. I saw Tony Blair, John Major and Gordon Brown in the flesh on different occasions, and was struck each time by how tall they seemed. Maybe they were standing near short people at the time.

But an internet search reveals that Messrs Blair and Major were both six feet, Mr Brown was five feet 11 inches and David Cameron was six feet one.

Being tall doesn’t just bring the ability to reach top shelves in supermarkets and the inability to fit comfortably into a bus seat. There may be other benefits.

Taller people have a lower risk of many diseases, though they may have a higher risk of cancer.

Some studies show that taller men do better in education and earn more – though as our richest ever prime minister Mr Sunak may be the exception.

There were similar outcomes for women, though the difference was less pronounced.

At the moment the Dutch are the tallest men in the world, with the average adult male standing at six feet tall, three inches taller than the average British man. It’s possibly handy in the Low Countries.

Of course our height shouldn’t really matter but it’s clear that it does to some, and gives rise to the notion of “short man syndrome”.

It is the thinking that men in particular who are short in stature are also short-tempered, aggressive and hungry for power and influence, as a way of compensating.

It’s sometimes called Napoleon complex, although some historians now reckon that the French emperor wasn’t as short as once thought.

The idea that he was five feet two was put about by British newspapers of the era as anti-French propaganda. He may, some think, have been five feet seven – about average for an adult male at the time.

Some dictators are much more touchy about it, such as Romania’s Nicolae Ceausescu, who was obsessed with his image.

Almost all official photos showed him in his late 40s. And state TV was under strict instructions not to reveal too obviously that he was just five feet six.

If you’re really troubled by your height, and you have plenty of money, then cosmetic surgery can make you taller.

Holes are drilled into the leg bones and metal rods are fitted inside and slowly lengthened by one millimetre per day, until you reach your desired height.

There then follow months of daily exercise to build up mobility. But it’s fraught with risks, including that the bones may not fuse back together.

So it doesn’t sound worth it. And on the whole I think we should learn to live with our physical imperfections, whatever they are, and not judge ourselves or others on appearance alone.

Whatever you make of Rishi Sunak – and it’s probably too early to say – he does at least show that you don’t have to be white to be prime minister.

Maybe he could prove that you don’t have to be tall either.