I AM bothered – seriously. Another of those fatuous surveys was published on Friday to stir up our culture of fear.

A day and a newspaper doesn’t go by without something to crank up the tension that attempts to rob us of peace of mind and being happy with our lot in life. We may be the most advanced species on the planet and the most technologically developed since we first learned to stand on our hind legs, but God forbid that we should enjoy ourselves.

We are continually battered with scaremongering. If you eat this or that you will irreparably damage all sorts of parts of your body; you’ll be mugged, stabbed or beaten to a pulp if you go out on the streets after 7pm; if any more people move to our country we’ll sink below the waves – which, incidentally we once ruled but of which we are now paupers – and, of course, our schools, health, police, social services and any other public body you can think of are falling apart.

Sometimes it makes you wonder whether the rebellion we baby boomers championed in the 60s was actually all that smart. Maybe things were better in the ‘good old days’. But how old does it have to be before it was good.

Over the recent Bank holiday weekend we took a trip to Hertsmonceux Castle in Sussex where a three-day Medieval Festival was being staged. Once you’d left the car behind and stepped into the castle grounds it really was like going back in time.

Even the air hummed with a relaxed atmosphere. The cares and stresses of the modern world were left behind as lute and flute music filled the air, people carved staves, made bows, flew Peregrine falcons, told your fortune and roasted hogs over open fires. Lords and ladies, dressed in their finery, paraded among the tented villages and in the ring men dressed in armour, mounted horses and charged at each other with big sticks (called jousting I believe).

Nobody told you not to eat the mead cake (or indeed drink the mead) because it would rot bits of your body and it was wonderful to see children engaged in full battle with wooden swords and axes. I rather suspect that any of the health and safety brigade who turned up had been put in the stocks behind the castle.

Of course while everyone was probably not so stressed out in Medieval times with no newspapers and surveys to wind up the anxiety, life expectancy was a little blunted due to wars and plagues, but then you can’t have everything.

So what’s bothered me? Well Professor Berit Heitmann of Copenhagen University Hospital has been busy with a survey and his conclusion (I know you’ll find this hard to believe) is that people with small thighs run a higher-than-average risk of developing heart disease leading to an early death.

I nearly spewed my coffee all over the table in a Beaconsfield coffee shop when I read that on Friday. Then I realised the guy’s serious. I mean who first sat down and said: ‘Right let’s measure people’s thighs and look at the differences between those with fat thighs and thin thighs’. Why not arms, or necks or big toes?

Anyway like all well institutionalised modern human beings of the Fear Culture I did the obvious thing. I measured my thighs. Apparently the benchmark is 60cm (23.6 inches in English). Mine are 53cm so I progressed to the next reaction: panic.

I’m going to die because of thin thighs.

Unfortunately the story I read didn’t tell you how to put weight on your thighs. You can eat as much as you like but if the weight goes on the wrong place you’ll die anyway. If the obesity doesn’t get you, the thin thighs will.

Maybe the answer is to bulk up thigh muscle which as far as I can understand, can only be done one of two ways. Either by taking anabolic steroid – in which case I’ll end up giving Usain Bolt a run for his money – or start pumping iron down the gym.

Since I fancy doing neither I’ll make the best of my rapidly dwindling years and offer to measure the thighs (ladies only of course) for the inevitable follow-up survey which will reach a different conclusion as they invariably do.