As I write, there is probably a huge barbecue being prepared in Suffolk. Someone is probably scrambling around for fire-lighters and kindling, whilst someone else is looking for a really really big umbrella for when it inevitably rains.

This is because the country is now infected with H5N1!

I am sure you are absolutely terrified of H5N1, because although it sounds like an attacking manoeuvre in Battleships, it is in fact the deadly Bird Flu.

The name Bird Flu is not in itself very scary, and although the official line is that the threat to humans of H5N1 is ‘negligible’, we have all known the experts to be wrong before (has anyone ever read Mark Lawrenson’s predictions page on BBC Sport?).

I am quite sure that the bad AIDS was first known as the Monkey Sniffles, and look what happened there. What the experts need to do is give these diseases more appropriate names. Names that will ensure that the general public give the illnesses due respect, and behave appropriately. Bird Flu just isn’t scary enough.

Bird Plague of Death is better. Or even the Avian Killing Cough.

If you had to rename an illness to something more appropriate, what would it be?

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