Yesterday
Thursday, October 16, 2014 at 14:52 Well, that was a long and occasionally bizarre day.
The announcement that the London Health Commission – a body set up by Mayor of London Boris Johnson in 2013 – wants to ban smoking in the capital's parks and squares sparked a mini media frenzy.
For me the day began at 5.00am (following four hours' sleep) when I scoured the newspapers, online and in print, to see how much coverage the story was getting.
It was front page on the Daily Mail and the story – and Forest's response – was also featured in the Guardian, Mirror, Daily Express and Daily Star. Online our comments were featured on a hundred or more media websites including BBC News, ITV News, Channel 4 News, LBC, Reuters and many more.
At 5.40 I got a request to appear on Good Morning Britain (ITV) at 7.00 but I could't because I was still at home in Cambridgeshire.
Instead, at 6.05 I talked to Paul Ross and Penny Smith on BBC Radio London before driving to Huntingdon to catch a train to Kings Cross.
Shortly after nine I was in a taxi en route to Broadcasting House for a series of back-to-back BBC local radio interviews:
BBC Radio Kent
BBC Radio Coventry & Warwickshire
BBC Radio Shropshire
BBC Radio Surrey & Sussex
BBC Radio Devon
BBC Radio Berkshire
BBC Radio Cornwall
BBC Radio Sheffield
BBC Radio Stoke
BBC Radio Leicester
BBC Radio Scotland
BBC Radio Gloucestershire
Next stop – following a coffee break at Caffe Nero directly outside the entrance to Broadcasting House (lots of BBC employees in the smoking area!) – was the ITV News studios in Gray's Inn Road.
My opponent was former Labour minister Tessa Jowell but having travelled to the studio and waited 30 minutes to do a live interview we were given no time at all to make our points.
Watching at home, Dan Donovan commented: "Took me longer to eat a sandwich."
My next appointment was in a small park, Paddington Street Gardens. No, I'd never heard of it either and nor had the cab driver.
When we found it I made a beeline for the BBC cameraman in the corner and we were soon joined by health correspondent Branwen Jeffreys and an old adversary Dr Alan Maryon-Davies.
It must be eight years since Branwen and I last met but I remember it vividly because it was the day MPs voted for a comprehensive smoking ban (February 14, 2006).
Like yesterday it was a long day punctuated with numerous interviews in a variety of locations across central London.
My first interview with Branwen was in the morning at the King's Head pub in Islington. Later I was asked to go back and be interviewed again, after MPs had voted, and I recall pitching up tired, desperate for a pint, and in a resigned, somewhat flippant mood.
Branwen got several commentators to line up in front of the bar – I felt like the condemned man – and she went down the line inviting us to say a few words.
I was holding a pint in one hand and it was the only moment in my life I wished I was a smoker so I could have lit a cigarette and exhaled with the sort of insouciance that epitomises the coolest smokers.
Anyway, I won't forget yesterday's meeting in a hurry either. One, Branwen wore an electric pink coat that will be seared on my brain forever.
Two, we had a really good laugh – and I include Alan Maryon-Davies in that. (Alan and I have crossed swords several times on radio but in person he's very charming.)
Anyway, Branwen had decided she wanted to do something a bit different. So the three of us were filmed walking together, chatting intensely.
Alan and I were then filmed facing one another, deep in conversation. Over and over we repeated the points we wanted to make while the cameraman swooped around us.
Occasionally one or both of us went off piste. At one point I suggested there should be "adult only" parks which prompted quizzical looks followed by a sudden burst of laughter.
It was a slightly facetious comment but the more I think about it the better it sounds! Why should children dictate everything adults can and can't do in public?
The whole thing took 30 minutes to film. Inevitably the broadcast report was a fraction of that, with Alan and I given no more than a ten-second soundbite apiece, but it was fun to film.
Then it was back to Gray's Inn Road to record a brief interview (in another small park) for ITV's Evening News. It wasn't broadcast, as far as I know.
Come 4.30 I was at the Millbank Studios in Westminster doing a live interview on Sky News with Kay Burley, followed by a recorded interview to be broadcast later.
I was also booked to do CNN but that was cancelled because of the developing ebola story. Instead my final interview – at 9.00pm – was with the BBC News Channel, back at Broadcasting House.
I arrived home at 11.30.
Thankfully Forest wasn't alone yesterday. Other opponents of excessive regulation pitched in and were vocal in their condemnation of the plan.
Stephanie Lis, representing the Institute of Economic Affairs, did a great job on several programmes including Five Live and Channel 5 News.
The Institute of Ideas was out there too courtesy of Claire Fox and David Bowden. Read Dave's insightful article Why did Lord Darzi pull out of an anti-smoking debate? on Politics.co.uk.
I also bumped in to Dave Atherton who was coming out of Broadcasting House just as I was arriving in the morning.
The good news is: Boris seems to have distanced himself from the proposal to ban smoking in parks. According to the Telegraph today: Boris Johnson calls ban on smoking in parks 'bossy'.
Of course the plan will come back again and again. That's how the anti-smoking lobby work. They keep banging on until they get what they want, relentlessly browbeating the opposition (and politicians) into submission or apathy.
All I'll say is this: we made a lot of mistakes when we campaigned against the ban on smoking in enclosed public places a decade ago. We won't make the same mistakes again.
Further reading: Park smoking ban shows how tragically anti-smoking movement lost its way (Ian Dunt).
Reader Comments (3)
Brilliant job and big thanks to all concerned. We all made mistakes over the indoor smoking ban, not least our complacency, but suffice to say we won't get fooled again.
And of course, we have the power of the Internet now at our disposal – something which we didn’t have for most of the long, long run-up to the smoking ban. And it’s certainly having an effect. From a quick glance of most of the recent “death is only ever caused by smoking” stories which have been desperately pumped out by Tobacco Control in recent years to try (usually unsuccessfully) to raise indignation levels to their previous levels shows how many more people (though sadly not all) have now rumbled the lies, the spin, the misinformation and the scams which these power-crazed folks have been dishing out for years. Even the “park ban” has now dropped from the headlines – in previous years it would have been good for a least a week or two of stories.
It shows that Tobacco Control’s star is definitely on the wane. Perhaps there are too many new kids on the block, with anti-sugar and anti-salt and anti-booze campaigners all scrabbling to steal the template. Or maybe the fact is that even those people who haven’t worked out that they’ve been duped for a very long time are now, quite simply, bored with everything and anything bad in the world being blamed solely on smoking and nothing else. Even a drone could/should be able to work out that that can’t possibly be true, no matter how much they might want it to be.
Keep up the good work, Simon!
I saw you on Sky with Kay, I was pleased they gave you a slot (although you did look a bit frazzled - I understand why!)
It strikes me that this debate allows the opening of the whole smoking question once again. The point you rightly made is that cigarettes are legal and there should be places that people can smoke. So take the Japanese example (I was there last year) smoking is banned in the street - but there are open smoking zones, often near train stations, but you can smoke in bars (if the bar allows it - many do).
I've always felt the smoking laws are upside down - I would rather it was possible to smoke in a pub and not in the street. If everyone is so concerned about kids seeing smoking - then adult only venues, like pubs, would be the obvious solution.
Simon, I think you are in a superb position to suggest a 'big solution' to the smoking issue. I respectfully put forward the idea that you suggest all 'stake holders' get around a table and hammer out a smoking policy that will last.
Even if the anti crowd don't accept - it will make the pro-choice lobby look inclusive and open to dialogue.
best
Mark