I WAS sitting in the cinema waiting for the film to start last week when a woman behind me let out a loud spluttering cough.

“That's it, we’ve all got swine flu,” some joker quipped from the back row, and everyone laughed.

It was funny because you just knew that’s exactly what everyone was thinking.

And I’ll bet you've had a similar experience recently, because over the last week or so we’ve all become utterly and totally OBSESSED with swine flu.

I know it’s a serious issue and I'm not trying to belittle it, but don't you think it’s about time we got a grip?

The Government's Chief Medical Officer for England has said that a possible 30 per cent infection rate among the population could lead to 65,000 deaths.

That's a terrifying statistic. But wasn’t it only a short time ago that thousands of us were supposed to die from CJD?

And wasn’t it predicted that we’d all be collapsing with heat exhaustion this summer?

Us Britons love a good bit of drama. Everyone who so much as sniffles is sent home from work and instructed to call the flu hotline to arrange for their dose of Tamiflu to be delivered asap.

And everyone who actually has swine flu is elevated to celebrity status.

You’re no one if you’ve not got a friend of a friend who's suffering from it.

The media have only fed our growing obsession. When Cherie Blair got the virus, the tabloid editors must have been rubbing their hands together in glee.

A story containing our two favourite subjects — celebrities and swine flu.

Why can't we keep our reaction in proportion?

I blame the 24-hour news channels. Every piece of breaking news that comes in is treated like the biggest scoop of the year.

To be fair, watching the evening bulletin in general this year has been nothing but an exercise in receiving news of impending doom.

First we were told that the world's economy had crashed and we were all going to be poor. Forever. Then it was the housing market collapse — and the news that most of us would be plunged into negative equity.

From there we learnt that all our MPs were greedy liars. And then the spotlight of truth turned on the tabloid newspapers, who we found out — shock horror — were using underhand techniques to get stories.

One piece of bad news after another.

They might as well have got Dermot Murnaghan to scream: “THAT'S IT, IT'S ALL OVER, WE'RE ALL GOING TO DIE!” from our screens every evening.

What worries me is that we’re becoming desensitised. Let’s hope we don't get to a “boy who cried wolf” situation, where something really bad happens and we ignore it because we're so used to being told to panic.

My favourite take on swine flu was the sign I saw in a butcher's window recently that read: “Get your own back on the swine — buy your bacon here.”

Well, you've got to laugh haven’t you?