I am getting in shape so I can model for magazine

It's been a few months since I ran the London Marathon and though I still go running down the lanes near our cookery school, at Brompton, near Shrewsbury, I don't have a proper regime.

So Jenny and I have agreed to be put through our paces by a personal trainer.

We've got a gym at Brompton, or, rather, a fitness room. It's fully equipped and we use it as often as we can. But you know how things are. It's too easy to sit down for a coffee, rather than hop on the treadmill.

So we've booked in with a personal trainer who visits whenever he can. We let him use our fitness room and he puts us through his paces.

Actually, I'll let you into a secret. There's another reason for getting fit. I've got a friend who works on the fashion magazines, in London, and she asked me if I'd do a modelling shoot for them. So I've got to get into shape for that.

They 'phoned me the other and asked me my size? Like any self-respecting bloke, I said: "Ahem, cough, erm . . . I'll get back to you."

And so I will. But not until I've toned up for the photo shoot. I'm expecting to do lots of ab work so that I can fit into the clothes. Hopefully, I'll be able to share the results with you later this year. We're working with one of London's best fashion boutiques, Matches, which has branches in Wimbledon and Richmond. I took a look at some of the clothes at its online shop the other day – they are absolutely amazing. I'm hoping that at the end of the shoot, the stylist will tell me that I'm welcome to take the clothes home with me.

Signing up to a fitness plan has given Jenny and I another idea, however. We're thinking of turning Brompton into a boot camp.

There have been loads of TV programmes about boot camps: it seems every reality show has some place that they send people to so that they can shape up and ship out. So we're thinking of using Brompton for that.

We've got plenty of rooms at our B&B, we work regularly with our personal trainer and we've got the cookery school, so there's a place where we can dish up healthy food.

It seems to make perfect sense. People can book a week in rural Shropshire and go from fat to fit with their very own personal chef.

Marcus Bean is a regular on ITV's This Morning. He owns the Brompton School, at Atcham, near Shrewsbury, on a National Trust Estate.