Reading The Guardian at breakfast Wednesday morning, I came across a short article in G2 by Stephen Moss refuting the claim that fat people are lazy. Now, as a fat guy myself, I must say I’m far from lazy, but Stephen Moss was even better: he collected a list of high achievers in history that have been fat:

“Fat people don’t work as hard as people who are not fat,” claimed Dragon’s Den fire-breather Duncan Bannatyne. He may not realise it, but some of history’s most significant figures have been fat. Here, we raise our extra-milky lattes with two sugars and mayonnaise-filled superclub sandwiches to 10 high-achieving fatties.

The list includes very famous people including Henry VIII, Buddha, Santa Claus, Orson Welles, and Luciano Pavarotti. In that spirit, I decided it would be nice for me to compile my own short list of famous fat people that have been influential in popular culture.

• Shaquille O’Neal: Sure, he may be tall and built, but if you look at him closely (especially during the off-season) it is clear that the man has paunch. It is precisely that size advantage that has made him so dominant in the NBA: his ability to throw his weight around has secured his place as one of the greatest big men to ever play the game.
• John Candy: Quite possibly one of the funniest men to ever live, Candy used his size to bring laughter to the people around him. In fact, comedy was once dominated by the fat man: Chris Farley, John Belushi, John Goodman, and Drew Carey are just a few examples of this fact.
• Warren Sapp: To tell the truth, I could probably have put the name of any NFL lineman (notably the great and inimitable Reggie White) on this list, but I chose Sapp because at his prime, he was not only bigger than most of the players you see in the league, but because he has been part of the most dominating (and fattest) lines in this history of the NFL with both the Buccaneers and the Raiders.
• Jack Black: Emerging as a leading Hollywood funnyman that has the ability to take on the dramatic role, Black embraces not only his fatness, but his unkempt and crazy look as well.
• Winston Churchill: It’s hard to argue that Churchill is one of the most celebrated and renown politicians of all time. Whether you agree with his politics or not, he definitely wasn’t a lazy fat man.
• Queen Latifah: In the late 80s rap world, being a woman was hard enough; being an overweight woman was practically unheard of. Queen Latifah took her situation as a proud and strong African-American woman and turned it into a career of music celebrating her power as a woman and now into a film career showcasing the true beauty of her body.
• Jason Alexander: Okay, he may not be as prominent as the rest of them, but he made his mark playing a short, fat, balding, broke, glasses-wearing oaf. You can’t blame me if I can relate.
• Mo Vaughn: If any sport was made for the fatman other than football, it was definitely baseball. You don’t need to look like Derek Jeter if you can consistently hit it out of the park, and Mo Vaughn was the ultimate fat baseball player. Sure, there have been other players that have been better (Big Papi, Cecil Fielder, David Wells) and other players that have been fatter (Kirby Puckett, John Kruk), but when I think of fat baseball, Vaughn is the first guy that comes to mind.
• Rosie O’Donnel: Love her or hate her, Rosie’s done a lot for fat people in America. Her daytime talk-show was one of the most entertaining and enlightening shows to come on during the day, and she’s maintained her celebrity presence pretty well for a woman that was constantly being derided by mainstream media as a fat blabber-mouth.
• Tony Soprano: Sure, he’s a fictional character, but James Gandolfini’s mobster has the dream life. Money, fame, notoriety, and women women women. All us fat guys dream of having a life like his.
• The Notorious B.I.G.: If there ever was one fat guy that embraced his fatness and used it to his advantage, it was Christopher Wallace. Biggie Smalls, as he was often called, made hip hop sexy and smooth, instead of thugged out like the West Coast rappers were trying to do. Thinking of Biggie conjures up images of lyrical prowess, melodic flow, and of course, money and women.

There’s probably tons of others I should be adding to this list, but it’s just a start. And the moral of the story: all fat people aren’t lazy.