The FAST campaign wants you to call 999 if you can answer, about someone you’re with, “yes” to the question “Has their Face fallen on one side?”, “no” to “Can they raise both Arms and keep them there?”, or “yes” to “Is their Speech slurred?” The idea is to get people with strokes to hospital as quickly as possible.

Several readers have been in touch to say that they found the ads on TV frightening and guilt-inducing – had they done enough for a friend or relative who had an evolving stroke? Was it their fault that a stroke progressed as far as it did?

I hope that the effects of these adverts will be investigated, in particular to see if they have any lasting benefit to public health but also to see what the adverse effects are – like what the readers writing to me have experienced.