Greetings from Television Centre
Saturday, March 31, 2012 at 8:03
Simon Clark

Currently at BBC Television Centre in west London.

Arrived at 6.15 to do Five Live Breakfast followed by BBC Breakfast on BBC1. I am doing BBC Breakfast again in an hour or so and was briefly in the Green Room with Chief Medical Adviser Professor Dame Sally Davies who seems very personable.

Sitting opposite me is a child whose mother "believes" that he suffers from asthma because of her smoking.

The reason we are all here is to discuss the government's new "hard hitting" advertising campaign designed to discourage parents from smoking at home.

The BBC has the story online: TV ad shows danger of 'invisible secondhand smoke'. The campaign is getting a fair bit of coverage elsewhere too.

Forest has issued this response:

"Yet again smokers are hit by a fusillade of estimates and calculations designed to spread fear and revulsion.

"It's only a matter of time before loving parents who smoke in or around their homes are accused of child abuse and risk having their children taken into care.

"Tobacco is a legal product. Adults must be allowed to smoke somewhere.

"If the Government doesn't want children exposed to even a whiff of smoke they will have to amend the smoking ban to allow designated smoking rooms in pubs and clubs. That is the only sensible solution.

"Meanwhile, are they going to ban barbecues and bonfires?"

PS. Pat Nurse is on Five Live shortly after eight.

Update: The 7.10 interview went OK. The 9.10, if I'm honest, wasn't my finest hour.

I went head-to-head with Professor Terence Stephenson, president of the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health, who threw me a bit by claiming that passive smoking is the major cause of cot death.

That's news to me. I know smoking is often mentioned in relation to cot death but the principal cause?

My understanding is that the causes are still open to debate. Why else would we have the ongoing discussion about whether a baby should lie on its back, on its front or on its side?

Anyway I had a moment when I was talking but didn't feel in full control of what I was saying.

A strong coffee would have helped. Instead I've been sipping water all morning.

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