A paramedic has revealed that she deliberately takes as much time as possible between emergency callouts just to annoy everyone who is waiting for a potentially life-saving intervention.

Polly Thomas has been working for the Essex Ambulance Service for five years, and she also revealed that she will often just park her ambulance at the side of the road, stick on some Lionel Richie, grab a bag of Hula Hoops and just watch the world fly by.

She added, ‘I am sick and tired of the general public blaming government cutbacks, time-wasting callers and pissheads who think that we are a fucking taxi service for long ambulance waiting times, when the truth is that I and thousands of others like myself just can’t be arsed.’

‘When it gets really hectic sometimes, with multiple heart attacks and strokes being reported, we all co-ordinate our routes and park at the nearest Wild Bean Cafe to sit down and enjoy a leisurely two-hour lunch of sausage baguettes and Sunny Delight.’

‘To be fair, most of the time we’re not even hungry – we are only doing it to piss everyone else off.’

‘Last week I was told to attend an address seven miles away because an elderly gentleman was unconscious, but I didn’t really like the sound of that so I found somewhere quiet and completed more than 130 levels of Candy Crush Saga.’

We decided to carry out our own investigation, and yesterday we stumbled across a group of seven ambulances hidden away on an industrial estate in Basildon.

While the radios were constantly buzzing away, all of the on-duty paramedics were busy rehearsing an amateur dramatics production of Some Like It Hot in a disused warehouse.

One said, ‘We have been practicing this all year and can’t let things slide now.’

‘Anyway, these old codgers who have had a fall have family to run them into A&E don’t they?’