To be in a picture of health you need to have, or have recently, recovered from, a major illness or be of an advanced age and still look as if you can take on a marathon.

Reporters fall back to ‘picture of health’ when pulling together survivor stories or those on spritely elders defying the long decay to decrepitude.

“Fast forward to last Wednesday and the 21-year-old (Jason Collett ) looked a picture of health as he recorded his first win as a senior jockey aboard Heart Testa at Canterbury, days after completing his apprenticeship on Monday” (New Zealand Herald, October 5).

About 82-year-old Fraser Perry: “He is a picture of health and has participated in virtually all of the annual triathlons since the inception in the 1970s” (Star-News, North Carolina, September 19).

American football: “Those of you who are eager to see Andy Reid become the former head coach of the Eagles might be wise to root for Michael Vick to be the picture of health this season” (The Philadelphia Daily News, September 12).

“At 41 he (Gary Barlow) is a picture of health in a Breton top, brown chinos and suede desert boots” (The Telegraph Magazine, October 6).

Cliché of the Week appears in The Australian newspaper Mondays. Chris Pash’s book, The Last Whale , a true story set in the 1970s about Australia’s last whaling station and the activists who fought to close it, was published by Fremantle Press in 2008.