On the sick list

"SORRY boss, it turns out I'm allergic to Donald Trump, so I'm not going to be able to come in for the next four years!"

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Today is National Sickie Day, the most popular day in the calendar for bunking off work, according to studies by boffins. If you've convinced yourself you're just too ill to work today, you'll certainly be in some famous company.

Lady of the limp: Famous for setting up hospitals during the Crimean War, Florence Nightingale, above, returned to Britain in 1856 convinced she was about to die. The nurse spent much of the next 54 years in bed complaining of everything from heart disease to headaches. She passed away in 1910, having lived to 90.

Pasty poet: Romantic ditty writer Percy Bysshe Shelley obsessively examined his skin, wrongly thought he had syphilis and once became worried he would develop elephantiasis - making his testicles balloon - after sitting next to a woman with swollen legs.