Disability Bitch hates Cola

Initially I was anxious to hear a disabled actress was entering a medical drama, until I read that she won't be playing a patient - she's going to be some kind of hospital executive. Result!

The thing is, I've always secretly wanted to be a caked-in-make-up glamorous uber-soap Bitch, ideally one with shoulder pads like in Dynasty, and now Leslie's beaten me to it. I admit it, I'm sulking.

The blow was enough to drive me to drink, except, like all good cripples, I'm on a new form of medication which I really can't combine with alcohol. This means the only liquid vice available to me when I turned to the drinks cabinet was a family-sized bottle of cola. Obviously I HATE COLA, but I figured the heady combination of sugar and caffeine was about as good as it was going to get, so I opened it and started drinking.

Four hours later, I could see the end of the bottle and, delirious, was on the phone to my No-Legged Friend demanding that he source more of the muddy-brown elixir and bring it round post-haste so we could enjoy it while sitting in front of the telly and screaming abuse at re-runs of Men Behaving Badly - the show which made Leslie famous - on Dave.

"Be careful, Bitch," he advised. "That stuff's dangerous." Well, given the doctor-prescribed rubbish I pump into my body on a daily basis, I laughed at his warnings, asking why a few tooth cavities would matter between friends, especially given everything else that's wrong with me. Fillings don't count.

"It's worse than that," he looked serious, "Cola can actually make you disabled."

More disabled? Disbelievingly, I turned to the internet, only to discover that my No-Legged Friend was absolutely correct, according to a recent report. It seems that "excessive cola consumption can lead to anything from mild weakness to profound paralysis". It's all very scientific and something to do with dropping potassium levels, but it does seem to be the case that drinking several litres of cola a day can result in these adverse, disabling side effects.

There was even one ostrich farmer - really! - who experienced lung paralysis. He'd drunk between 4 and 10 litres of the stuff before falling ill. My first thought, readers, was, "Who in the hell drinks that much cola in one day? Does he even have any teeth left?" Then I realised that I myself had consumed a gallon within about two minutes.

The report did give me pause for thought. I have several friends with muscle-wasting style impairments, and many of them enjoy fizzy pop. Suddenly, I became suspicious. Perhaps they are not disabled at all, but really elaborate benefit fraudsters who drink cheap cola in order to claim lavish benefits, fooling the assessors with their soft drink-induced lethargy. It's possible. It COULD happen and probably does. I'm alerting the DWP. I'm on the phone now to the Benefit Fraud Hotline or whatever it's called. I'm telling them to remove the sugar and caffeine-based fizzy drinks from the cupboards of all of their claimants. I feel confident that claims will drop by half within hours. That'll save taxpayers some money after all they've forked out on MPs. Thank me later, readers.

It crossed my mind to warn the good people of Brighton and Hove that Heather Mills was in their vicinity this week, tutoring innocent passers-by in how to cook a potato. But she lives locally, so they're probably used to her.

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