Until last week I didn't know how to spell cholesterol.

It was a word I rarely used, either speaking or writing, so I thought it was called cholestrol.

But times have changed and now I not only know how to spell and pronounce the word correctly but I know a lot about cholesterol.

In fact I've become a bit of a cholesterol bore and The Mother has taken to sighing and rolling her eyes upwards every time I start a conversation with the words: "Guess what? I've got high cholesterol."

Well I have.

And it's not even as if I wanted to have the test that revealed this fact.

No, my GP decided I was of an age and size when it might well be useful to check these things out.

It meant having a blood sample taken, which always makes me queasy. I can't bear to look as the nurse plunges the needle into my arm, usually commenting on how difficult it is to get at my wobbly veins.

When I was told to come back in a week's time, I fully expected to hear that everything was normal. That's always been the pattern in the past.

On previous occasions I've been tested (at my own request) for every virus, disease and mutation known to rampant hypochondriacs, with the exception of foot and mouth and swine fever.

And every time the test has come back negative and the doctor has given me one of his 'Get out of here, you malingering waste of space' looks.

So I was totally unprepared to be told by the nurse that my cholesterol level was high, high enough to warrant the doctor scribbling "See Me" at the bottom of the report.

Now is that, or is that not, a cause for alarm? As every reader of newspaper medical pages knows, high cholesterol equals furred arteries and possible strokes and heart attacks.

I did what I always do in these situations.

I told everybody, starting with a girl in the library.

"Excuse me, can you tell me where you keep books on cholesterol? I've got high levels you see."

Then I went into several bookshops and repeated the performance. After which I came home clutching a copy of a book called The Eight Week Cholesterol Cure by a man (an American of course) with an even more unpronounceable name than cholesterol.

The following morning I made an appointment to see the family solicitor about some amendments to my will.

"I've been meaning to do this for some time," I told him. "But now something's happened that makes it imperative. I've got high cholesterol."

"Really?" said the solicitor. "So have I. What's your level?"

We swopped figures and his level was higher than mine -- but by just one point. As he's a big chap in the six-ft plus category, I reckoned he could probably handle much more of the stuff than me.

Conversely, I came to the conclusion that as I'm a mere five feet two my body must be packed with wall to wall cholesterol.

Then, feeling rather special, I went to see my GP, reminding him that this time the appointment was at his request, not mine.

He asked me questions about my height, weight and general lifestyle and whether anyone else in my family had a cholesterol problem. I said the only cholesterol problem members of my family had was that they'd never heard of it.

He fed this information into his computer, pressed a few keys and it came up with a prediction of how likely I was to die from a heart attack.

"Youre just average," he said. "Sorry to disappoint you . . ."