It's World No Tobacco Day today.
Does anyone care? Someone must otherwise I wouldn't be up at this ungodly hour.
I have been invited to take part in a discussion about smoking on RTHK Radio 3 in Hong Kong. 'Backchat' is broadcast in the morning but Hong Kong is eight hours ahead of the UK so it will be 1.45am in Britain when I go on air.
Earlier today (yesterday) I spoke to the London bureau of Xinhua News Agency, the Chinese state news agency. The interview will be used on their English language news service and English language website.
I was also asked to do a studio interview for Al Jazeera but they wanted to talk about smoking in developing countries so I declined.
You can see their report here: Tobacco firms accused of thwarting controls.
Update: The discussion on RTHK lasted the best part of 30 minutes either side of a news bulletin that featured a surprising amount of news from the UK. (Andy Coulson has gone global.)
There were three other speakers – someone whose name I didn't catch, Professor Sophia Chan of the University of Hong Kong, and Yorkshire-born Judith Mackay, a "Hong Kong-based medical doctor and anti-smoking advocate".
Mackay's name was familar so as soon as I was off air I Googled her name. According to the World Health Organisation:
[In May 2007] Time Magazine named Dr Judith Mackay one of the "most influential people in the world" in recognition of her role as a leading campaigner for stricter tobacco control measures and vigilant critic of tobacco industry practices.
As a senior policy advisor to the World Health Organization, Mackay was one of the early architects of what is today a global momentum to implement smoke-free public places and workplaces and proven, effective tobacco control measures in countries around the world.
A Hong Kong resident for 40 years, Mackay was also a key player in the development of the landmark WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, one of the most widely and rapidly endorsed treaties in United Nations history.
Anyway, there's not much to say about the 'debate' apart from the fact that I was in a minority of one. Plain packaging was the main issue but the discussion included addiction, taxation and smoking bans.
Hong Kong has a smoking rate of just eleven per cent (the target is five per cent by 2022) and I would guess that of the remaining smokers very few were listening to an item inspired by World No Tobacco Day.
Certainly the handful of emails and texts that were read out were totally one-sided. One listener wrote that he/she had looked me up on the Internet and I was a "failed journalist" and a "stooge" of Big Tobacco. And that was one of the nicer ones!
The British presenter concluded the debate by reading out another text, "Light up Forest and reduce it to ash", which prompted a snigger from one of his guests in the studio. He then thanked us for taking part and declared, "Happy World No Tobacco Day to one and all."
Enough. It's three o'clock in the morning and it's time for bed.