IF I had my time over again... How many times do we say this in our lifetime? Loads, I bet. I know I do. While like Edith Piaf, there are times when je ne regrette rien, there are others when I wish things had been oh so very different.

Like having to wear National Health specs from the age of two, invariably with an eye patch in a futile attempt to correct a squint. Very fetching. Not. (Bonnie kid I most certainly was not and before anyone scrabbles to get to their computer and post a snide comment on The Press website I absolutely agree, nothing’s changed much...)

Or being made redundant. That was a very dark period in my life, which I wouldn't wish on anyone. Talk about feeling worthless and of no consequence. Truly horrible. But there again, out of adversity comes opportunity and there comes a time when you pick yourself up, dust yourself off and start all over again.

But heading in a different direction and having to do things differently wasn’t a choice I made but one thrust upon me. So not a path I chose for myself. And that, according to a palliative care nurse in Australia is what most people on their deathbeds wish they’d done with their lives had the courage to live a life true to themselves and not one expected of them by others.

That, and wishing they'd not worked so hard, been able to express feelings better, remained in contact with friends and allowed themselves to be happier were the top five dying wishes of those about to meet their maker.

Which is all to be expected if you think about it, as these are among such things we pretty much spend our lives striving to get right.

But what about the other dying business of leaving stuff in wills? Bequeathing all your worldly goods to the local cats home or issuing instructions for a grand to be bunged behind the bar so all your mates can get ripped at your wake is pretty standard fare when it comes to some bequests.

Like one besotted woman who left $300,000 to actor Charles Bronson who, believe it or not, actually accepted half of it. He must have been a bit skint or something because that hardly did his personal reputation any good, did it?

And one John Bowman who died in 1891 apparently believing he would be reincarnated and reunited with his already dead wife and two daughters. So he set aside thousands of dollars so his mansion could be kept ready and in good repair for when he reappeared with his spouse and offspring.

The bequest also included paying servants to prepare and serve a meal every night for four people so the family presumably wouldn't go hungry when they came back to the land of the living.

Dinners that no one ate were prepared, cooked, set out and cleared away every night for 50 years before the money ran out. There was also a canny Canadian lawyer who popped his clogs in 1926 but not before writing a will stipulating that the cash value of his sizeable estate would go to the woman who gave birth to the largest number of children over a ten-year period.

This led to a frenzy of procreation known as The Great Stork Derby with a handful of women trying to outdo each other. You can picture it can't you? A 'I need sex and I need it NOW!' sort of approach...

The courts tried to strike out the clause from the will but Millar had used his legal skills to make it watertight and the sex marathon went on... Ten years later four women eventually shared the money after each gave birth to nine children. No doubt they needed it with all those mouths to feed.

So those on their deathbeds wish they'd expressed their feelings better? Hardly a dying wish those women would be worrying about, for their feelings were abundantly and rampantly clear weren’t they?

THEY just don’t get it do they? Business leaders are up in arms because banker Fred Goodwin has been stripped of his knighthood and RSB chief Stephen Hester rather too late in the day said he wouldn't take his nearly £1m bonus.

Just goes to show how out of touch the banking fraternity are with what the man on the Clapham omnibus thinks.

Instead of getting all indignant and high-handed, they should come off their haughty self-righteous pedestals and get down and dirty with the proles. Then they’d find out what life is really like. And what on earth do they spend £1m on anyway?