A UK government report has caused shockwaves by claiming that ill-health now costs the UK economy more than £100billion a year. But given how often we are all told that we must be ill, stressed-out and unhappy these days, perhaps the real shock is that so many of us still manage to get up and go to work.

The fact is that most people in the UK now lead longer and healthier lives than ever before. Yet 2.7million still claim incapacity benefit - and long-term claimants have quadrupled since 1981. Why?

The bigger underlying question is, why are so many prepared to see themselves and others as ill

Perhaps because we live in a culture where authorities and experts, from health ministers downwards, appear obsessed with personal health and lifestyle as the be-all and end-all of life.

Last year a government ‘happiness’ guru announced that no fewer than eight million Brits suffer from a neurotic disorder, and called for 10,000 therapists on the National Health Service to help us all cope.