Calling for 'full fiscal freedom' with one breath, but calling for a 'full fiscal pact' with the next.

BBC: pound coins and notes

Voters seem confused about where Mr Sarkozy is heading, as he lays into capitalism with one breath even as he urges the French to become more competitive with the other.

ECONOMIST: The French voters blow a raspberry at their president

And it is no more plain-speaking, for on fuel with one breath it claims the tax must be high on environmental grounds and with another it justifies it because of spending on health and schools.

ECONOMIST: Confidence or cynicism?

Last week Tanya Streeter dived into the record books by descending 400 feet into the ocean and propelling herself back to the surface, all with one very deep breath lasting three and a half minutes.

BBC: Breakfast with Frost

Mrs Merkel and the ECB cannot continue to threaten feckless economies with exclusion from the euro in one breath and reassure markets by promising the euro's salvation with the next.

ECONOMIST: The euro zone

It "nails the thorny subject of race relations with a bilious zest that takes one's breath away", wrote the Guardian's theatre critic Michael Billington, in an early review.

BBC: Author fury at blackface casting at German theatre

One that surpasses our wildest dreams, one that leaves us bursting with gratitude for every breath we take?

FORBES: How To Live A Mind-blowingly Amazing Life

Izzard on humour is similar to Izzard on anything: a quasi-performance full of long, evocative phrases that run into one another with not a lot of pauses for breath.

ECONOMIST: Eddie Izzard

After another breath and dive I made one thrust with the spear and surfaced with a wriggling bug.

BBC: Lobster diving in the Abacos