Judith Woods

Madonna needs to learn to let go

HAPPY heart syndrome, which causes victims to die of joy, doesn’t sound such a bad way to go, does it?

At least for the person afflicted; there are considerably worse fates than being overwhelmed by a killer combination of adrenaline and endorphins.

But it would have been a bit of a downer for everybody else had a euphoric Leonardo DiCaprio keeled over in delight after 23 long years in the Academy Award wilderness. If wellchuffed Bake Off winners routinely collapsed into their millefeuilles, it would bring a new meaning to the term “Show Stopper”.

And the medical consequences of joy unconfined would play havoc at weddings, christenings and all-inclusive holiday resorts.

But now that Happy Heart Syndrome is on my radar, my main concern is for the wellbeing of the Today programme presenters. Every four years when the presidential primaries kick off in America, they go as crazy as pent-up Longhorns let out on spring pastures.

Unlike the UK polls where all commentary must be robustly even-handed and empirically unbiased, politics across the Pond affords endless opportunity for extended metaphors and breathless excitement. Now a “Special Correspondent”, James Naughtie’s paroxysms of adjectival ecstasy are almost unseemly at such an early hour. Unseemly and potentially fatal.

Delirious election fever is bad enough to endure. Rhapsodic Happy Heart Syndrome represents, I fear, an element of jeopardy too far.

‘Today’ presenters have gone as crazy as pent-up Longhorns let out on spring pastures