WHY do so many of us feel guilty about having a morning lie in?

I certainly do. If I’ve not risen and shone by 7am I begin to fret.

I start the day with a regular exercise routine - a hundred lift-ups. Then I open the other eye.

Staying in bed, even if I don’t feel too good, has never been an option - but perhaps that could be a mistake.

I thought about this the other day when I managed to get one leg on to the bedroom floor but for some reason couldn’t make the other one follow suit. Maybe, as 65 peeps over the horizon, I’m subconsciously preparing to be a bedridden OAP. In that context, perhaps keeping one foot in the bed is next door to having one foot in the grave.

Yet being confined to bed doesn’t have to be the end of a meaningful life.

Those afraid of the prospect should heed the biographical lessons of history. Or perhaps that should be historical lessons of biography.

Either way, in case you wonder what the heck I’m on about, here are four examples to illustrate my point.

Let’s start with the great artist Henri Matisse, who learned to paint after being confined to bed following appendicitis. Apparently, his mother bought him some paints to keep him occupied - and possibly stop him from picking his stitches.

Next, there’s the World War Two army officer David Stirling, who thought up the idea of the SAS while recuperating from a parachute accident.

And how about Tom Jones? Apparently he developed his love of singing from listening to the radio while spending two years in bed recovering from TB.

Finally, there’s John Lennon and Yoko Ono. We must surely thank them and their 1969 ‘bed-in’ at the Amsterdam Hilton for reminding us what beds are really for - making the world a more pleasurable and peaceful place.