The mobile phone industry maintains the line that there is no proven link between mobile phone use and folk going bonkers or having bits of them go wrong. No doubt they will be pooh-poohing research to be published later this year in the International Journal of Cancer.

But, according to leaks of the study, people who regularly used mobiles for 10 years and more were up to 40 per cent more likely to develop nervous system tumours - gliomas - on the side of their head where they hold their phones.

This is the second major study to suggest a link between long-term yakking on the wireless airwaves and growing odd lumps on your head.

A recent Finnish study by the Radiation and Nuclear Safety Authority found that people who had used a mobile for 10 years or more were 39 per cent more likely to sprout a glioma on the side of their head they held their phone.

A spokesman for the Mobile Operators Association told the Daily Telegraph, "The overall results of this study do not show increased brain tumour risk in relation to mobile phone use.

"The findings related to tumour location are difficult to interpret, he claimed."

Fancy a fag, anyone?