IF, AS OSCAR WILDE had it, "each man kills the thing he loves," it's also quite likely the converse holds just as true. It certainly did for a chap named Jim Fixx, which is why anything dealing with exercise should be stamped with a skull and crossbones and carry a label reading: "This Stuff Is Dangerous."

I've just read some bilge in the British Medical Journal to the effect that people who jog regularly outlive us lounge lizards by up to seven years. In my case, I figure that's about two decades and at least one funeral off center.

The thing that Jim Fixx loved was jogging. Such was his passion for bounding up roads and down paths and around any bit of acreage that looked like it could be tromped on in quest of good health, that he became the guru of American jogging and, as one description had it, the "best-selling running fitness author of all time."

That was about the time Jim Fixx collapsed and popped his clogs about 50 feet north of the Village Motel in Hardwick, Vermont, while out for a jog along US 15 on a summer's day back in 1984.

This physical fitness fanatic was 52 years old at the time. I, a certified lounge lizard of truly Olympic standard, am now 65. Add to that the seven-year edge that the British Medical Journal gave joggers over the sedentary, and you get the 20-year advantage that abject laziness has given me over one of the world's leading puff-and-pounders.

That margin, of course, grows with each year that I remain perpendicular to the planet. I figure the years will increase as long as I remain true to my pantheon of two heroes - King George V and Jim Fixx - and learn from my wise little tabby cat, Currant Bun.

It was King George whose words of wisdom regarding exercise became a guiding principle of my life: "Never run when you can walk, never walk when you can stand, never stand when you can sit, and never sit when you can lie down." This means my wife may have to bring in the coal and feed the cats, but no plan is perfect.

Whatever, the good king - "Your Imperial Highness" to his pals - lived to the ripe old age of nearly 71. Jim Fixx is there actually as a sort of anti-hero, to remind me of what can happen if you ignore royal precedent.

Now don't get me wrong. I know that no one lives forever (even though the wretched rent control officer in my neighborhood seems determined to give it a good shot) and that we are all approaching Death just as sure as God made little green apples and No. 9 buses vanish into a parallel universe when it rains in London.

My own approach is from behind and a bit to the right, always keeping Death in my sight while also keeping the closing rate down to a minimum. This has worked well so far. You might give it a try, if it's not foggy outdoors.

Back to that medical journal report: One Dr. Peter Schnohr, a cardiologist from Copenhagen and the research leader, allows as how "our study (shows) that even a vigorous activity such as jogging is associated with a beneficial effect on mortality."

Speak for yourself, Pete. On the last two occasions when I broke into a jog, the first landed me in the hospital with a sprained ankle when I tripped down the stairs at the rail station in Bronxville, New York, and the second was when I sprinted for a No. 9 bus and spent the next 45 minutes stuck in traffic with a minor heart attack.

If the Almighty had wanted us to spend hours jogging and such, He would never have provided us with cars and buses (except No. 9s - these can cause heart failure via paroxysms of fury) and bikes and escalators and elevators and roller skates. I view it as no coincidence that since the arrival of these inventions, human lifespans have increased significantly.

This has in no way deterred my family doctor, otherwise a reasonably sane man, from banging on at me about getting more exercise and less lounging about watching cricket on television, etc. ad nauseum. I periodically am summoned to his dungeon for a lecture on the high cost to my health of spending my time being a big lazy bum.

It would be churlish of me to point out to him that I am 65 and don't look a day over 64 while he is 20 years or so my junior and looks like Death warmed over in a faulty microwave. Instead, I employ a technique learned long ago from my cat Currant Bun - how to look like you are listening intently while hearing exactly nothing.

While Doc is blithering on, I relax and ponder other more urgent matters of life, such as readjusting the six numbers on my lottery ticket so I can make a down payment on a family-size hammock, plan for getting a Bachelor of Science degree in Bone-Idleness at the Open University, or perhaps get a new, more comfortable sofa for watching cricket.

What I don't do is jog, or lope, or even walk at a rate that might embarrass a snail on Prosac. Before I learned the Jim Fixx lesson - basically, that he got it all wrong - I went through the heart attack and triple-bypass surgery and a few months in a hospital with pancreatitis.

Since my Fixx fix, my ailments have run the gamut from a wart on my shoulder to a sun blister on the upper lobe of the right ear and a badly ingrown nail on the big toe of my left foot - an injury acquired by actually trying to play cricket instead of watching it safely on the tube.

So when my race has run its course - or, rather, I've strolled through it - I'm sure I shall be ready to face Death. I just hope he doesn't show up in one of those Lycra jogging suits.

Thought for the Week: If you must choose between two evils, pick the one you've never tried.

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