YOU might not know it, but even when you’re dead, you can be a health and safety risk.

Apparently, as you rest in peace, your headstone could be in danger of putting someone else six feet under, unless it’s built like a Dutch fort.

So much so that over the past two years, councils across Britain have spent a whopping £1.65 million topple-testing gravestones, making sure they aren’t likely to fall over and massacre someone’s little toe.

At this rate we’ll be donning hard hats and high visibility jackets every time we pay our respects to Great Aunty Gertrude. Yet this madness shouldn’t really come as a surprise.

Last year, the Wimborne Militia were banned from the historic ritual of firing their muskets over the town’s Christmas tree because it made people jump.

Meanwhile, those decorating the tree would have required everything but a degree, because if you want to scale a stepladder in this country, you’re going to need a certificate.

So it was refreshing to see over the bank holiday weekend that the ’elf and safety killjoys still haven’t managed to get their latex-clad mitts anywhere near the annual Cheese Rolling event at Cooper’s Hill, Gloucestershire.

Happily, as they have done for 200-odd years now, crazy competitors from around the world gathered at the famous slope on the bank holiday, to chase a wheel of Double Gloucester to the bottom.

News crews from around the world shared the hilarious footage of men, women and children tumbling down the hill in pursuit of their prize – the health and safety bores must have been cringing under their factor 50-sun cream.

As well as bragging rights, the winner of each race got to keep the famous cheese, while second place took home a tenner and third place left with a fiver.

Showing everyone else how it was done was Gloucestershire lad Chris Anderson, who won two of the races, before announcing his retirement from the competition. As it does every year, this quirky event brightened up my bank holiday weekend and, as I watched the hilarious clips on television I promised myself that I would take part next year.

Events like these are one of the last bastions we have against health and safety officers, who put the kibosh on our great traditions and try to spoil the extraordinary sense of fun of us Brits.

If they try and get in the way of this event next year, perhaps I’ll be chasing an ’elf and safety officer instead of a wheel of cheese.