It is almost a throwback to the Victorian travelling shows. These had as their sole objective the ruthless financial exploitation of the sad human exhibits whose abnormalities apparently made them "interesting" to the more ghoulish paying customers of that time.

The programme on Patrick Deuel (the so-called "half-ton man"), however, was a heartwarming story of human fortitude in the face of extreme adversity.

The Victorians and less sympathetic among the TV viewers would simply dismiss Deuel's condition as gluttony, defined as "habitual eating to excess". Of course, it was not as simple as that.

Deuel clearly suffered from a potentially fatal eating disorder he did not even know he had. The solution was down to him: he alone could take the tough remedial action required.

The ending, however, looks to be a happy one - he has already shed 32 stone by exercising and sticking rigidly to a 1,200-calories-a-day diet. He is eight months ahead of schedule and his reward has been life-saving gastric bypass surgery. His dream was to walk with his wife in his garden on Valentine's Day and I have no doubt he achieved that goal.

What on earth has all this to do with pensions A-Day reforms, I hear you ask. Gluttony is this week's pension deadly sin and Chancellor Gordon Brown is starring as the modern-day version of the ruthless Victorian showman. And it is potentially your pension fund he is exploiting.

After 6 April, gluttony in the pension sense will be defined as "habitually saving to excess". And like poor Patrick Deuel, many members of final salary schemes are blissfully unaware that their form of financial gluttony could lead to very serious implications for the health of their retirement fund. Under the proposed changes to pensions, Brown will introduce a new tax rate of 55 per cent that will be applied to any pension fund which exceeds a new lifetime limit of £1.5 million in 2006-7.

This equates to a pension of about £75,000 a year. So, if you are in a final salary scheme (and let us face it, this means almost all senior managers in the financial services and other sectors) and are currently earning more than £100,000 a year - or have promotion prospects that will take them to that level - you might already be committing the pension deadly sin of gluttony.

Many of our clients who work within the major banks, fund management groups and insurance companies in Edinburgh and fall into this category have received letters from their employers pointing out this potential problem. Yet few are prepared to take the next step and offer their staff professional advice on how to escape this punitive new tax.

Depending on the size of your fund, independent advice could enable you to take advantage of what is called "transitional protection" that could secure your existing benefits and remove the threat of the 55 per cent tax charge.

But, without impartial advice, the parallels between the larger pension investor and Deuel's case are startling. His life was at stake; your quality of life in retirement is under threat. He had to seek his own professional advice and act on it immediately; and you have just 28 working days to do likewise.

Douglas Young is head of A-Day client guidance at Edinburgh independent pension adviser Abercrombie. It plans to hold a series of A-day seminars this month and next, free to Scotsman readers. To book a place or request copies of its free briefing notes on the pension changes, call 0131 226 3400 or go to www.abercrombie-financial.com.

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