RONAN KEATING WEIGHS INTO HEALTH DEBATE

Because he's a middling popstar with a middling managerial career, Ronan Keating has decided that he understands health funding better than Dr Paul Walker, chair of Welsh public health association PHA Cymru.

Walker suggested that cancer took more than an equitable share of the money spent on health and research in the UK, compared with the levels of cash spent on, say, respiritory diseases.

Walker went on to point to the number of celebrities who front up cancer fundraisers, saying they helped "mismatch" the money. He was basing his comments on an in-depth survey of funding patterns conducted by the UK Clinical Research Collaboration.

Ronan Keating, presumably drawing on his knowledge of how to put together a ballad, went ballistic:

You don't knock charities that are doing good work."

He added: "It is disgraceful that a doctor could say something like that. He said that men and women in the street fear cancer more than they should - if one in three people are being diagnosed with cancer, they have every right to be concerned.

"I am very disappointed in him. It is totally absurd that someone in his position could say these things."

Well, up to a point, Lord Keating. Obviously, Ronan's experience of cancer is coloured by the loss of his mother to the disease, something you wouldn't wish on anyone. But to describe it as "absurd" when someone attempts to put the cancer risk into context and to point out that if you pour all your funds into one, trendy cause disease it starves other areas of cash - that might be overstepping your area of expertise, Ronan.

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