We all need to get a life — our own

I WAS trying to separate two squabbling children and get them out the door to catch a bus when I first heard a newscaster announce that the actress Natasha Richardson had sustained a serious fall on a Canadian ski slope.

I froze immediately: “An actress having a serious fall on a ski slope. That now makes news bulletins?”

In the following days, it was a constant feed of information: her initial nonchalance after the fall; her then worsening medical condition; the sudden turn for the worse and then the rumours she was brain dead. It dominated newspaper, TV and radio before a statement was released on Thursday morning that her life-support machine had been turned off.