We hear so much about "near-death experiences" and people who make mystical trips down corridors of light, but now there's a charmingly atheist story of near-death drama.

72-year-old Claire Rayner spent three weeks in intensive care, sunk into a coma and suffering from pneumonia, septicaemia, kidney failure and immune system breakdown. But rather than finding Jesus, like so many of the world's suffering and desperate people, Rayner had this to say about her experience:

"I tell you something, in case anyone wonders, not a single out-of-body experience, no long corridors of light, I was an atheist when it started and I've remained one. People used to say to me, 'You wait until something really bad happens, you'll start praying', but I didn't and I can't. I don't put this down to any superior being, I put it down to the superb training and skill of the people looking after me. I remain the humanist I always was."

I find that roughly ten bazillion times more uplifting than any tale of angels and suspiciously Caucasian messiahs awaiting my newly bewinged and harp-laden self in a golden cloud city.