Dear John,

I'm very conscious about my height. Is it possible to grow taller as an adult? If so, what can you recommend to me? Are any of these growth supplements on the market actually effective?

Dear John writes:

Having recently watched Teen Wolf again, I'd be reluctant to advise somebody to take any kind of hormone supplement unless their doctor has prescribed it. Because, oh brother, those things are probably either Tic-Tacs in a different container with an unpronounceable label, and have no effect other than making your breath noticeably fresher with just two delicious calories, or they'll end up causing you to grow a moustache like Tom Selleck or Rosie O'Donnell.Happily, there are ways that you can make yourself taller without resorting to pill-popping, though. Those medieval stretching racks they have in the London Bridge Experience look like a hoot. Or, alternatively, you could go to one of those private surgeries in Russia, where they make you taller by actually breaking your legs, attaching a frame on each one by screwing spiky metal pins into your bones, and adjusting the frames every day for months so that new bone can grow in the gap. Because, you know, that sounds like a massive barrel of laughs and not absolutely agonising, frightfully risky, extraordinarily expensive, and completely insane.

Give the pills and so on a miss, in other words, and start trying to accept yourself for who you are. Besides, there are plenty of people who haven't let being vertically challenged hinder them in their lives. Look at Kylie Minogue. Or Janette Krankie, or Ann Widdecombe, if you must. Or that Austin Drage on X Factor, who is even shorter than Mr Pocket-Size himself, Dermot O'Leary, and still gives half the nation hot knickers.

Alternatively, I hear that Argos does a smashing line in pairs of stilts.