Every man over the age of 50 should be on a daily medication of cholesterol-lowering drugs to protect against heart disease and stroke, the government’s heart tsar said yesterday.

Roger Boyle said that blanket prescribing of statins should also apply to women from 60 or 65 to reduce the hundreds of thousands of deaths a year from cardiovascular diseases. He acknowledged that such a move would lead to accusations of a “nanny state” and that people would resist being medicalised from the age of 50 or 60.

The British Heart Foundation urged caution against mass medication using statins until there was longer-term data on the side-effects. Research published this week in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology suggested a very slight increase in cancers associated with higher doses of the drugs.

If the UK’s surgeon general-equivalent is down with these statin things, then so am I, by Jesus.