Sit on this: the growth of extra-wide deckchairs and king-size toilet seats

A British deckchair company is widening their seats due to the population's expanding waistlines - and they're not the only ones making adjustments
Extra-large deckchairs
Extra-large deckchairs are the just the beginning … coffins, CT scanners and toilet seats are all growing to accommodate larger people, too. Photograph: Alamy

Britain's last dedicated deckchair manufacturer is making seats an inch wider to accommodate the broader bottom. As well as making their single seaters 23 inches wide, Southsea Deckchairs report more people buying their Wideboy range, originally devised for two persons, for single use. If you aren't already saluting the union jack while listening to Land of Hope and Glory, now's the time to start. "We recently had a big lad come in and use one as a standard chair," company boss Stephen Davies told the Sun, "He'd never fit into a normal one."

What's going on? Well, for a start, that staple sitcom gag in which a holidaymaker tries in vain to shake a deckchair off their ample derriere as they run up and down Skegness's esplanade is finally subject to the law of diminishing returns.

Not much else is diminishing, though: 65% of England's population is obese or overweight. The NHS already spends more than £5bn a year treating obesity-related illnesses. The World Health Organisation says 1.5 billion of the world's population is obese or overweight. One result of this growth in girth is a growing number of products that cater for the larger human. Here are some more examples.

Toilets seats

The Big John range of toilet seat is tested to withstand 380kg (60st). "They will not bend or break," says US businessman Scott Kramer, who specialises in manufacturing products for larger people. Their ultra-wide 48cm sitting surface gives 75% greater seating area than regular 36cm toilet seats. The Big John seats are also 3.8cm higher than ordinary seats and, sensibly, have extra large stabilising bumpers. Perhaps unsurprisingly, they also boast the largest holes of any type of toilet seat.


Indiana-based Goliath Caskets supplies 20-gauge steel coffins with extra width, length, and depth. Its largest casket is 4ft wide, 8ft long and can hold a body weighing up to 457kg (72st). "It is important that we alleviate the embarrassment felt by the families of the overweight," explained Keith Davis of Goliath Caskets.

CT scanners

An NHS hospital in the north-east recently spent £1m on a CT scanner that can penetrate five times as much as fat as current models and can support patients weighing up to 300kg (47st), rather than the previous limit of 160kg (25st). Stretchers, corridors and hospital doorways have also been widened to accommodate bigger patients.

Airline seats

Airplane manufacturer Airbus offers airlines the option of installing extra-wide seats measuring 51cm across, instead of the standard 46cm on its A320 jets because of what it calls "trends in demographics". Those wider, usually aisle seats, unsurprisingly, cost more. In 2012, Samoa Airlines initiated a "pay-by-weight" system, whereby a passenger's weight as well as their luggage determines ticket price – a move chief executive Chris Langton described as the "fairest" way to address the problem of obesity.

What next? "When next you get on a bus or train, observe how many of your fellow travellers are being squashed as they fight for sitting space," Tam Fry of the National Obesity Forum told the Telegraph in June. "If their trips are to be as safe and comfortable as they deserve, passenger seats will have to be redesigned as well. And if it's public transport today, it will be theatre and cinema seats tomorrow. In restaurants, many seats have already had the arms stripped off them so that the wider guest is no longer uncomfortably confined." The obesity epidemic, if that's what it is, has created an ongoing business opportunity to make fat profits.