You could have them woken up in the morning by the lady with the hoover and sit them next to old men with hacking coughs. Give them a real taste of the health service.""If you had listened to what I had been saying you would have realised that I really can't give you an answer about this. The idea is to recreate the experience - so the nurses wouldn't have to go near them. I'll have to talk to the managers but it will be low on their priority list.""Perhaps you could throw in a trip to the operating theatre, to really scare them.""We can't have people wandering around the place.""They wouldn't. A way of alerting the public in general.""I'm not sure this will work We don't rent out our beds Our hospital is for sick people. They wouldn't have treatment.""So you want a patient of yours to take up a hospital bed.""Yes How much would it cost?""We'd have to look into it There aren't a lot of spare beds Is your patient ill?""It's more of an ongoing thing Lots of patients. Why particularly at night?""It was just to fit in with whatever bed shortages you have.""But what would this person be aiming to do?""They would see what would happen if they didn't look after themselves.

The high-art lobby scoffs and carps, but the performers bring opera to the mob with at least the veneer of real conviction The truth is that populism creates more winners than losers. And however wet, scarcely a soul left early, doubtless mindful of an adage familiar to this hallowed venue: it's not over till the fat lads sing.. "Hello, Director of Nursing's office (Westminster and Chelsea Hospital). Can I help?" "Yes I want to hire a bed for the night." "What sort of bed?""A ward bed.""In relation to what?""I'm an alternative health practitioner, specialising in yoga and stress management, and I want my clients to come in and see what an NHS hospital is like.

To make them see the need to prevent themselves from falling into a hospital scenario.""It's not something you could get an answer to straight away. It was all so crowd-pleasing that they did it again, and the performers puffed chests and pumped paws and looked much less like Three Tenors than Three Amigos.The Mastercard airship floated overhead all night, a tidy reminder that this whole operation is fuelled by hot air and plastic. Despite overbearing expectation, the first half somehow failed to ignite, but after half time the place exploded into life. A bit like England vs Scotland, seen here three weeks before. As soloists they all reserved their big moments till last: Carreras's "Un di all'azzurro spazio" (again, fat chance), Domingo and Pavarotti their star turns from Puccini.And then, with the rain long gone, came the second medley of crowd-pleasers. "Maria" and "Tonight" from West Side Story, "Moon River", Spanish ditties "Ciolito Lindo" and "Carminito", "Matlinata" and, just to complete the collection of meteorologically inappropriate songs, "O Sole Mio". Pavarotti read this last from the music sheet, presumably to make sure he didn't mention ice-cream by mistake.