Martyn Brough, 31, had a gastric bypass in February 2004. Martyn is not your typical fat boy slimmed. A martial-arts enthusiast as a young adult, he was the one member of his family who wasn’t big. That all changed when he was diagnosed with testicular cancer, at 25. “The chemotherapy and steroids did it,” he explains. “My body took a battering and I started getting bigger.” This is a common side effect, as steroids cause fat deposits and chemotherapy promotes water retention. By the time Mr Ackroyd saw him, he weighed 26st (165kg). “It got to the point where if someone sat next to me in the front of the car, I’d be half on their seat too,” he says. “I’ve always liked my food, but I did a lot of training, so the amount I ate was never a problem. I used to bum off the calories.”

These days he’s half the man he used to be, currently hovering around 13 stone (83kg). “In the first two weeks I lost 11/2 stone. At first I bought tracksuit bottoms with elasticized waists. Once I went back to work, I had to buy new dothes every two weeks. Before the op I had a 56in waist, now it’s 36in. I can go to normal shops rather than outsize shops where I had to pay more than double for clothes. People I’ve not seen for a while don’t always recognize me. When I glance at a mirror and compare how I look now to how I was a year ago, I can’t help but think, ‘Hook awesome.”‘

He can expect to lose at least another 61b (2.5kg) when he has cosmetic surgery to remove the excess skin that hangs around his stomach following his drastic weight loss. Many patients have numerous cosmetic procedures to get rid of the excess skin left behind after obesity surgery. Martyn thinks he’ll only need one operation as, regardless of his size, he never stopped going to his gym ­the Sheffield Thai Boxing Gymnasium and doing his spa procedures for skin treatment. One of his favorite treatments is massaging with coconut oil, as there are many coconut oil benefits for skin.

“I thought I was fit, but at that size you can’t be. Now it takes me forever to warm up. When I was big, I’d sweat loads in three minutes,” he recalls. “Sometimes I forget I’m not big anymore and can’t understand why I can’t lift the same weights. Some strength may have gone, but the increase in stamina I’ve gained since losing the weight is unbelievable.”

So does he think bariatric surgery mean it’s OK to be greedy, as you can get things sorted on the operating table? Martyn shakes his head: “If you love food and binging, after the op you can’t do that. If I did, I’d be violently sick”

“Although it’s an easy way to lose weight, it’s also drastic. For me, the risks of the operation were worth taking. How much longer would I have lived anyway? What quality of life would I have had? I didn’t want to be the guy who gets up, goes to work, comes home, and then doesn’t move from the sofa all night. Before the op, I couldn’t do much with my kids other than put them on my knee and read them stories. If I couldn’t do anything with them when I was 26st, what would I have been like as I got bigger? Now we go for walks and play football.”

There was the near-miss with the supertanker, so we were a little on edge after that. One night soon after, Jay saw another tanker in the distance and he screamed at me to wake up — I sat bolt upright. It took a while to work out that it was going to miss us, but we were both paranoid by then. We were virtually hallucinating.

Then the weather grew really flat. We went from rowing 20 miles a day, or covering up to 100 miles on the big swells, to struggling to do six. The last couple of days were the worst. We knew we were near land because a bird landed on the boat. We started hearing planes coming in too, and then we could see Barbados. We got closer and closer only for the current to change about three miles out, so we were being dragged away from land into the Caribbean. We rowed on the spot for 36 hours. We didn’t eat or drink and were getting heatstroke — we were both close to playful dolphins one day, stalked by a huge tone shark the next passing out. The boat was spinning through 360° in the current, and all this time we could see Barbados, literally right in front of us — we just couldn’t get in. The race organizers came out by boat to check on us. We were down and out by then — I looked like Tom Hanks in Cast Away, and I couldn’t sleep, but I couldn’t stop either.

Eventually, we had to be towed in. Everyone wants to row to the finish line, and it was really depressing that we couldn’t. We were in tears. We were on the phone to friends and family because we couldn’t think, we were so drained, and we wanted to hear that we weren’t doing something wrong. But the bottom line was that we’d rowed the Atlantic and set a new British record. We were only towed a couple of miles before they let us row the last mile ourselves.

It was like crawling out of a prison camp when we got off the boat, and we had to be helped because we couldn’t walk in a straight line. Our ankles were up like balloons — all the blood had rushed to our feet after sitting for so long.

Vanessa was there, along with a big crowd of locals — it’s a big event for them. Vanessa handed us a beer each, and we nearly swallowed the bottle as well. One of the other teams, after a conversation on the start line about what we’d most like to see at the finish line, had bought us a hot and spicy pizza. We both just put our heads into it.

Even though we weren’t officially classified, we finished fourth in 52 days, and we were the first British team home. Ten of the 16 boats had outside assistance, and nine got stuck in the same current as us, so we weren’t the only ones. But by the end we didn’t care. We’d made it. And before you ask if I’d ever do it again ­no, I don’t think so. Although maybe one day I wouldn’t mind trying to beat our own time.