What would you consider an emergency? A road traffic accident, a heart attack, a stroke, a nasty fall?

All of the above are worthy contenders of course, but some people in this county clearly aren’t satisfied with the current A to Z of emergency services.

No, they’d like to see our over-stretched paramedics also answering calls on – among other life-threatening conditions – toothaches, colds and hiccups...

Perhaps we need an emergency service for dealing with complete idiots and time-wasters.

For every stupid call, the life of someone genuinely in pain or dying is put at risk.

Indeed, as one ambulance worker so poignantly put it: “In between all the drunks and time-wasters, there will be a little old lady who is struggling to breathe. And she will be so apologetic for bothering you and so polite, that you feel just awful that because of these time wasters, you might not be able to send what you would normally.”

For some people, what really matters is that emergency professionals are on standby in case they feel upset, need a prescription to be collected or want a lift home from the pub.

Tragically, stupidity really IS proving to be life-threatening.