While Leslie Ash celebrated, columnists seethed, indignant at the £5m in compensation the actor received after contracting an infection in hospital.

The News of the World's Carole Malone described the pay-out as a "kick in the guts" to families who have lost someone to a hospital infection. "It demonstrates the gutlessness of the NHS Litigation Trust [sic] who spit on ordinary people yet throw this obscene amount of money at a 'celebrity'."

Eamonn Holmes, writing in The People, thought it would be a kick up the bum for NHS managers: "It may be the single biggest incentive hospital trusts have to clean up their acts - because with pay-outs like that, they know now they can't afford not to."

Ms Ash's win could prompt a flurry of claims, suggested The Sun. Nearly 250 ongoing legal cases "are just the tip of the iceberg", it reported.

On the political front, The Observer reckons we are in for a row on presumed consent for organ donation, after it surveyed MPs. The poll showed a split along party lines. But former health secretary Frank Dobson said: "People will wonder why we didn't do it in the first place."

Meanwhile: "Londoners are sleepwalking into the biggest NHS overhaul the city has ever seen," reported the Evening Standard. Less than 400 people responded to a consultation on proposed reforms from Healthcare for London. They could try thinking outside the box (or beyond the grave) like Bradford Teaching Hospitals foundation trust, the subject of a snippet in the Sunday Mirror: "Health chiefs have had to apologise after inviting 84 dead patients to help run a hospital."

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