That sounds like a simple question. Unfortunately it isn't.

Let’s start with the easiest situation. Say you’ve been unlucky enough to have a heart attack, stroke or angina. Unlikely, if you’re a Mansized reader, but you never know.

You’ll end up on shedloads of drugs. And one, I guarantee, will be a cholesterol buster – known in the trade as a ‘statin’. Why? Because the specialists reckon that if you’ve clogged up your arteries, they don’t care what level your cholesterol is – it needs bringing down.

If you've never had a problem...

OK, so what about if you've no problem yet and you want to keep it that way. Again, perversely, we’re not actually that interested in your cholesterol level – at least not in isolation.

What we’re really bothered about is your ‘cardiovascular risk’. In other words, your chances of having a heart attack or stroke in the next 10 years.

True, that risk will be influenced by your cholesterol level but it’s also affected by your age, sex, blood pressure level, whether you smoke and so on.

All these factors are plugged into a clever formula and bingo: there’s your cardiovascular risk. And these days, the view is that, if your risk – as defined above – is above a rather arbitrary 20% level, then there should be an ‘intervention’.

That might mean, for example, stopping you smoking, or lowering your blood pressure or sticking you on a statin – it depends on the individual circumstances. Most young men won’t hit this 20% threshold but as you get older, you may well do.

So the answer is, your cholesterol level may be too high, but probably not. Don’t obsess about it, look at the whole picture and have a chat with your GP if you’re concerned.