In my mind the only way I could keep my weight down was by making myself vomit.” Not the words of a catwalk waif, but a quote from the autobiography of Scottish formula one driver David Coulthard, published last week, in which he reveals that as a young man he suffered from bulimia, the eating disorder that involves recurrent bingeing followed by intentional purging.

Coulthard, now 36, has had a long and successful career in formula one, very publicly living out the superstar-driver lifestyle: the home in Monaco, the Lear jet, the celebrity girlfriends. While all this was going on, says Coulthard, “I stopped eating fattening food and, before I knew what had happened, I was bulimic.” The revelation is a surprise on two counts.

First, Coulthard is a sportsman, albeit in a discipline that requires a certain sleekness. Nigel Mansell suffered a famous public humiliation in 1995 when it emerged he was too wide to fit in his new car. At 1.83m tall, Coulthard is similarly big-boned for the job; at one stage his weight fell to just 57kg.

In fact bulimia is not unknown among athletes. In his darker moments Paul Gascoigne, for example, would binge on ice cream late at night and then throw up. Research in the US, where an estimated 13% of women aged 15 to 25 suffer from bulimia, has even suggested that people who exercise a lot are far more likely to have the disorder.

Perhaps even more surprising is Coulthard’s maleness. Like anorexia nervosa — the chronic aversion to eating anything at all — bulimia has until recently been considered a largely female disease. This is slowly changing; some statistics suggest that 2-8% of all cases in the US are now male, while the UK too there has been a sharp rise in the number of male bulimics.

Some have blamed the “Adonis Complex” identified by psychologists at the university of Florida, who paint a picture of previously buoyant male self-esteem pummelled into submission by images of “bare-chested beefcakes” in advertising and films. Certainly, bulimic women have complained of similar pressures to look good, or at least to look thin. Perhaps the news that even dashing men in fast cars can be fellow sufferers might offer a little unexpected comfort.