I am a non-smoker and have always disliked the habit in others, but do understand that it's really common in the creative arena. For example, I have attended The London Comedy Writers Group sporadically over the past couple of years, but their habit of standing outside the pub smoking roll ups whilst getting harrassed by tramps wasn't really my scene, especially during the winter months. Pity really, but non-smokers seemed to be in the minority there.
Smoking is quite a thing with me.
My Dad managed tobacconist shops for a Dudley based company for almost 50 years. As a result I grew up in a smoking culture and I smoked almost everything legal. The ones you used to strike on the side of the packet, Laika named after the Russian space dog, Camel, Sobranie Black Russian and Cocktail, the list is almost endless. I was on 60 a day in the week, 80 at weekends.
When I developed an early morning cough I decided enough was enough. I really wanted to stop so I went for acupuncture. When I came out I gave my partner at the time the remaining fags in the packet and my lighter and told her to give them back when I get desperate.
We went to the pub which was a classic time to smoke.
That was over 30 years ago and I haven't had anything since.
To give up one really has to mean it. Paying lip service to some 'joining in' campaign is not the way.
Now I find the smell of people who smoke quite repulsive and thank the government of the time for introducing the ban.
At least I can have a pint now without having to put all my clothes in the wash when I get home.
Quote: Oldrocker @ 9th November 2014, 12:07 AM GMTSmoking is quite a thing with me.
My Dad managed tobacconist shops for a Dudley based company for almost 50 years. As a result I grew up in a smoking culture and I smoked almost everything legal. The ones you used to strike on the side of the packet, Laika named after the Russian space dog, Camel, Sobranie Black Russian and Cocktail, the list is almost endless. I was on 60 a day in the week, 80 at weekends.
When I developed an early morning cough I decided enough was enough. I really wanted to stop so I went for acupuncture. When I came out I gave my partner at the time the remaining fags in the packet and my lighter and told her to give them back when I get desperate.
We went to the pub which was a classic time to smoke.
That was over 30 years ago and I haven't had anything since.
To give up one really has to mean it. Paying lip service to some 'joining in' campaign is not the way.
Now I find the smell of people who smoke quite repulsive and thank the government of the time for introducing the ban.
At least I can have a pint now without having to put all my clothes in the wash when I get home.
Interesting comments, especially with the emotional ties. Giving up as early as your late 30s was a sensible move. If you started under age, I guess you did nearly 25 years but you gave yourself an opportunity to recover. I started as late as 20 would you believe and have clocked up just over 30 years. Well, 31 really.
Maybe it's wrong to allege that someone died from passive smoking though, whatever you think of smoking.
Quote: A Horseradish @ 8th November 2014, 10:28 PM GMTI have not been at all sure whether to comment either on this thread or privately. However, I have decided that I should say something and also to go public with it for reasons of directness. It could even be an education. First and foremost, I'm very sorry to hear about your wife and am sure from what I know of you that she will be in good care. Secondly, I am wondering if my comments on the D-I-Y thread may have inadvertently led to some questions and would like to be clear on any doubts that may have been raised.
In mid October, I decided to strip the wallpaper from the walls of one room. That was purely my decision and nobody else's although my father leant me a scraper for the purpose. I had managed to get through over 50 years without ever undertaking that activity. He saw it as a positive sign but from a real position it was bound to be disastrous. I am totally hopeless at everything of a practical nature. When in the past I tried to paint a flat, most of the paint ended up on the windows and the doors. I have the coordination of an orangutan. That is something which pains me given my precision in desk work. And in my current home, I wasn't anticipating meeting polystyrene last month and then having it showering over me from the walls.
The severe cough that I developed within 24 hours might have been a reminder of why I was embarking on the project in the first place. Yes, I am - or have been - a cigarette smoker and for aesthetic and financial reasons I was preparing to cease. I have only ever smoked in one room in the house and redecorating that room seemed to be a good start in the process. It would effectively have to make my home a non-smoking place. Perhaps that, though, in itself made the project seem more daunting. It seemed like a huge step.
Ironically I never have had a smokers' cough but I have always had a severe allergy to dust. This can lead to excessive sneezing and it affects the skin on the rare occasions that there is a dust disturbance. If anything, smoking has always alleviated it. But I had for some weeks experienced problems with skin and an idiot in a chemist speculated that it could have been caused by bugs. The very suggestion horrified me, it didn't ring true with my generally clean lifestyle and it has now been totally dismissed by proper medics.
However, nine days after the polystyrene incident, it meant that I did go round the carpets of the house obsessively for hours on end mainly on my knees and with dustpan and brush. This threw up dust into the atmosphere and triggered significant wheezing. I also threw my bed out which, with hindsight, didn't need to be done. And at the same time I cut the smoking down by more than half which is something that is known to have its own processes including temporary respiration problems. To then be sleeping on the floor and/or settees in a newly created dust cloud virtually finished me off. Antibiotics didn't work and I was back at the GP on Friday. This has been day one of a course of oral steroids, an inhaler, antihistamine tablets, topical steroids for the skin and an emollient. The GPs have obviously made a massive thing of the smoking during this period. They have seized the opportunity to get me to give up. This I will be doing in the coming days.
It is, I think, worth saying that people have always taken up smoking for various reasons. It is not the simplistic business many pretend. In my case, I am of the opinion that had I not done so - and drunk beer heavily - I would never have gone to university, socialised, had relationships, or ever held down work for more than a few months. Like most people one meets in life, I am a strange combination. Arguably there is an unusual amount of balance in me but many would accept that it is a balance of considerable extremes. I am naturally open and, socially, often unexpectedly lightweight. Some actually see me as very relaxed and most have felt that I am an above average verbal communicator. In parallel, I have always had an acute strand of anxiety, particularly in regard to serious matters which often portrays me as the very opposite, and I always needed coping strategies to ensure that the first could just about win in spite of the second.
Consequently, I briefed Government Ministers and others face-to-face for years when I would probably have otherwise been on benefits by the age of 24. I was also able to be someone who didn't merely socialise rather than stay at home but socialised as if there was no tomorrow, pushing myself into a lot of great places where I wanted to be when the more doubtful instinct was telling me to do the complete reverse. I pretty much gave up beer overnight at 42 and have stuck with it for nearly a decade. This was considered almost impossible by those who knew me but it proved easy. It's now about three pints per month maximum. Giving up cigarettes is a more difficult matter to address but I think it will happen as long as professional people don't whip up huge amounts of fear in my direction as that is guaranteed to be counter-productive.
I can't say that I ever found the dialogue around Roy Castle or indeed the smoking ban at all helpful. The former turned smokers into the people it was cool to attack when many of the other options for those who are natural attackers were removed from them. While the science on passive smoking is far from proven, it is no coincidence that smoker bashing arrived when bashing any other minority rightly became unacceptable. And by making every non-smoker potentially antagonistic, it was particularly harsh on people like me who had needed smoking as a device to socialise. There was certainly an element of social withdrawal and added stress, both of which may or may not ultimately have contributed to my early departure from the workplace. What is without question is that the psychology around smoking in all is too readily dismissed. Currently, in what is a fairly straightforward transition in me on paper, it is impossible to say how much of what's happening is physical and how much represents a deeper upheaval. I suspect the latter may be significant.
Finally, there is one other reason why I took to smoking cigarettes and drinking beer. Both activities were - and remain - lawful. To the self-professed experts who proclaim that the illegal status of other substances makes no difference to their usage, I can say bollocks from a purely personal point of view. It might well be true of the influential movers and shakers and of those some people call the chavs but it wasn't true of me. It was precisely how and why I could attend more festivals and gigs than some have hot dinners and enjoy them without other drugs. There is just one thing people need to know about the post Castle strategy on cigarette smoking. It is that every single bit of it from the over-accentuating of passive smoking through the pub, workplace and football ground bans and the soon-to-be banning in public parks has been designed with the purpose of decriminalising dope. It is effectively setting the barriers for a future legal cannabis usage which will be wholly in line with the laws for cigarettes. And whatever the rights or wrongs of that matter, it is sneaky, duplicitous and unfair in the way past and present law abiders are having to adjust to past and present law breakers. That advocates refuse to see it or accept it is a fascinating - if trite - cultural lacuna.
(Apologies Radish but I have to resurrect Sunshine's)
Care to elaborate? 
Quote: Paul Wimsett @ 9th November 2014, 7:08 AM GMTMaybe it's wrong to allege that someone died from passive smoking though, whatever you think of smoking.
Thank you Paul! At least someone has taken my point on board.
I suppose it was inevitable, but the last thing I wanted was for this to turn into a debate on smoking as my main thrust was Roy Castle being held up as proof positive of passive smoking when the evidence suggests otherwise.
Yes, it is a filthy habit and I am certainly not condoning it, especially as I have been affected by it with my wife now being disabled seemingly because of it.
I'm sorry if Chappers is particularly upset because of his personal experience (ditto me) but it was posted under General Discussion (sub title "Anything and everything else!") which is what the thread is for and after all Roy Castle used comedy in his act so think it is not remiss of me to want to discuss it and get other people's opinions.
Quote: Alfred J Kipper @ 9th November 2014, 10:32 AM GMT(Apologies Radish but I have to resurrect Sunshine's)
Care to elaborate?
I think my precis should suffice. 
The first 22 years I lived at home with a mother who smoked. It did not bother me at the time (as I knew nothing else I suppose). As soon as I moved out I became hyper intolerant to smoke and smokers. As a kid I must have stank like an ashtray as that is what all you smokers smell like...your breath stinks as well despite the mints you chew afterwards.
My old mum still smokes which is why I rarely go to see her and when I do I make sure I am in and out as quickly as I can.
I worked in government buildings before the cigarette policy and eventual legal ban. Endless meetings with some dirty bastard smoking next to me.
To those who smoke - f**k your dirty stinking habit 
To those who smoke right outside the doors of every office and shop - f**k your dirty habit
To those who smoke - you stink
What was the original post about again? 
Quote: Will Cam @ 9th November 2014, 5:42 PM GMTWhat was the original post about again?
And there's the nub - I regret starting this as it has turned into a smoking debate which I never intended. 
Quote: Hercules Grytpype Thynne @ 9th November 2014, 5:46 PM GMTAnd there's the nub - I regret starting this as it has turned into a smoking debate which I never intended.
Well, it looked like a smoking debate to me. What else is one to make of a title "Roy Castle - did he die from passive smoking?". At the root of this matter are questions about tolerance. I haven't owned a car since the early 1990s and the sum total of my flying amounts to 15 years. That was mainly for work purposes and it ceased in 2005. Mostly I don't drive or fly because of the damage both do to the climate. I could spend my days standing outside four-car households with an angry placard and decide never to associate with people who have foreign holidays at the drop of a hat. I don't because I tolerate what other people do in the main.
Actually, most people smelt of smoke in the sixties and the seventies because nearly half the population smoked. Since then, legal smoking has declined but the number of cars has quadrupled. The noise and speed of road vehicles have turned most of our streets into far more unpleasant places although there have been innovations to limit their pollutants. Industry is also cleaner with the pluses and minuses that entails but it is worth bearing in mind that for more than half of Roy Castle's life, most cities including London were under regular smogs. In parallel, lifespans generally became longer, not that the post sixties generations were at all appreciative. In a range of lifestyle activities from sleeping around to purchasing crap on dodgy street corners, they put more strain on health services, signed up to a fantasy of eternal life and when the latter turned out to be unreal pointed the finger of accusation at older generations and earlier lawful activities.
If I genuinely felt that most people were whiter than white, then I could be more persuaded on justification for any venom. However, I am of the opinion that the vast majority have at the very least dabbled in illegal substances or regularly overdo the use of alcohol. The first are widely tolerated for falling either into the category of youthful passage or unfortunate addiction. That they deliberately begin as a two fingers up to the law is generally brushed aside. I don't brush that aside. While the costs to the NHS of smoking are very high, so too are the costs of other drug taking but they are permitted to be overlooked costs because to assess their true cost is to tread towards labelling users as criminals. Arguably, those particular sensitivities are very misplaced. What are we asked to do? Dance to their tune and decriminalise. Still we are tolerant.
As it happens, I have never been highly judgemental on illegal drug taking but the social costs as well as the health costs are immense too. Try living next door to drug addicts for 13 years as I did until the mid 2000s and you would understand the point. Some take coke and play football at 3am in the morning against the wall of neighbours' bedrooms. The neighbours merely respond by going quietly to the GP, getting tablets for anxiety and manage just about to hold down a full week's work. Funnily enough, even then I feel most ordinary people can be tolerated to a degree but I am ultra conservative when it comes to the decision makers. If I had my way, no one who has ever broken the drugs laws would have a seat in Parliament and there would be buses of police on every street in the City of London acting against its illegal drug use.
More broadly as a pedestrian, I would be going much more heavily on speeding motorists. The cars I see regularly travelling at 55pm on 30pm streets are not driven by those who may or may not cause illness inadvertently several decades on. They are wielded by individuals who are woefully and arrogantly blase about the potential for killing off innocent passers by in the immediate moment. The sooner the majority of folk enter a monastery or a nunnery and travel only by pony and trap to the local Morrisons, the quicker we will really be able to have a sensible discussion on the lines implied by the original poster, whatever he claims. Unless and until we get to that point, it will just be a combination of speculation and discrimination.
Quote: A Horseradish @ 9th November 2014, 7:47 PM GMTWell, it looked like a smoking debate to me.
The key word is "passive" - the thread was not "Roy Castle - did he die from smoking?".
Horseradish, I have to say this. I look at this huge block of text, start reading, then think 'F**k it! I can't be bothered.' Can you sometimes precis?
Quote: Hercules Grytpype Thynne @ 9th November 2014, 8:40 PM GMTWell, it looked like a smoking debate to me
The key word is "passive" - the thread was not "Roy Castle - did he die from smoking?".
That is still an opening for a debate about the impacts of smoking. It could never have produced a definitive yes or no so any way the follow-up went was bound to be speculative. Castle died in 1994 so there had to be some reason as to why it was seemingly plucked out of thin air. I am not sure if that reason is entirely clear even now but I can get the gist of it. Others' contributions may be best read in the light of a similar thread in 2007 when some liberals chose to be illiberal on this one point as so many are and some who are vehemently anti smoking now were as vehemently anti then and not because of direct personal experience.
