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Listening to music has health benefits. Whatever will medical researchers discover next? That all work and no play makes people a bit dull? That money cannot buy happiness (although it might help)? That a good night's sleep is a restorative?

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Your CD collection could be a medicine chest

Listening to music has health benefits. Whatever will medical researchers discover next? That all work and no play makes people a bit dull? That money cannot buy happiness (although it might help)? That a good night's sleep is a restorative?

But let us stay with today's expansion of the frontiers of human knowledge. What is puzzling about Professor John Jenkins' review of the evidence for the Royal Society of Medicine is the fact that most of the research seems to have been carried out on classical music, and specifically on that of Mozart and Bach. Nice tunes and all that, but what about the rest of the classical canon, and what about the entire library of modern popular music?

Clearly, a night spent head-banging to the Nightmare Dropforgers of Hades will do little for one's well-being the next day, but what about a quiet night in the armchair with Acker Bilk on the CD player?And which is better for you, the Beatles or the Rolling Stones? Oasis or Blur? Boy bands or girl bands?

More research needed please, and less of a snobbish classical bias.