I don't want James Reilly telling me what to eat, but we need a fat tax

Malala, then 11, cries when she discovers her brothers’ two beloved pet chickens have died, and then she goes to her bedroom to retrieve her pink schoolbag. She sits on her bed, leafing through her notebooks. “The chickens died, but you got your notebooks?” Ellick asks her. “Yes,” she replies. “I think the notebooks are more precious.”

Malala’s “crime” was that she wanted to learn, and she was willing to campaign for that right. She had come to prominence when she wrote a blog for the BBC that made her an international symbol of opposition to the Taliban. But she’s also just a child – as evidenced by the documentary, which was screened on BBC World yesterday and is available on the New York Times website. Yousafzai is a child who is articulate and wise way beyond her years, but still a child.

This week, she was flown to a Birmingham hospital, where doctors say there is a good chance she will recover. On the same day, a reporter from CNBC visited the school for girls run by her father in Mingora.

It was full – every child was at their desk. It is hard to imagine a more powerful message to the Taliban – or a more compelling reminder to the rest of the world of how lucky we are to have universal education systems to squabble over.

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Felix Baumgartner, the man who jumped from 24 miles above the Earth, suffers from such severe claustrophobia that he once fled the US rather than get back in his pressurised suit and helmet.

His five-year training for his world-record jump was almost derailed by his phobia, which he eventually learned to control with the help of a sports psychologist. They used techniques including “combat breathing” – deep breathing, to the rest of us – and positive self-talk.

“We cultivated a situation to move a person to the edge of panic,” his psychologist Dr Michael Gervais told Wired magazine. “Imagine doing that repeatedly over 30 hours of training and, at the end of it, you’ve got full control of how your mind works, and you breathe freely in those moments.”

Fellow panic-attack sufferers, take heart.

Twitter: @jenoconnell