So there you are, lying on the ground about to enter the afterlife.

The swirly tunnel has formed and you can just make out your Gran and Grandpa and that kid who got run over at school and who you still think about on occasion, and even the goldfish you used to have as a child (you may be nearly dead but you can't help noticing that the water needs changing – suddenly you can feel the gravel on your hands just as you did when you cleaned the tank in the sink in your mum's kitchen all those long years ago)-

But you're pulled from your reverie by the sound of singing. High-pitched singing. A kind of disco falsetto. "Well you can tell by the way I use my walk, I'm a woman's man, no time to talk -"

Frankly, this isn't what you expected. You had been reckoning more on celestial choirs for your final journey – maybe even a bit of the Thomas Tallis that Terry Pratchett said this week that he would like to accompany him to the Other(Disc)world. But no, you have the Brothers Gibb, the Bee Gees, the band formed before Sir Bruce Forsyth was born, whose hit Staying Alive, can apparently be a life-saver, according to the British Heart Foundation (BHF).

You'd explain how, but someone seems to be thumping your chest. You just manage to open your eyes to discover – what the hell is going on here? – footballer-turned-actor Vinnie Jones rhythmically pressing down on your rib cage.

This has to be a red card surely?

But then you're jolted awake, as if something has restarted.

Which indeed it has. According to the BHF, pressing the victim's chest in time to the Bee Gees' Staying Alive can help the effectiveness of cardiopulmonary resuscitation.

Vinnie Jones appears in a TV commercial to make the point. We know where this is leading. Some ambulance crews are even swapping their familiar green tunics for flared white suits, with wide shirt collars worn outside the lapels.

Here they come now as they walk in rhythm ("Walking in rhythm, singing my song-.") down the street.

If they have to set up a drip, one of them snaps into that classic pointing at the sky pose immortalised by John Travolta in Saturday Night Fever and uses his top hand to attach the saline bag. It looks cool! "You Should be Drippin', yeah!"