Ian Willmore
Saturday, June 27, 2020 at 9:44 The Guardian yesterday published an obituary for anti-smoking campaigner Ian Willmore who died in April of a heart attack.
He was 61, the same age as me.
Ian joined ASH from Friends of the Earth in 2003, the same year Deborah Arnott was appointed director, and together they campaigned for the introduction of the smoking ban.
In July 2006, five months after MPs voted for the ban, they co-wrote an article I have mentioned here many times.
Published by the Guardian on July 19, 2006, ‘Smoke and Mirrors’ introduced us to two interesting concepts - the ‘swarm effect’ and the ‘confidence trick’.
Ian went on to work for the London Fire and Emergency Planning Authority and, very briefly, Age UK. According to his obituary he returned to ASH as a consultant on illicit trade and plain packaging and was still working part-time for the group until shortly before his death.
The Guardian obituary was written by Kathy Jones, a friend of Ian’s, and it reminded me that we once received an email from another of his admirers.
At the time the Forest website had a page on which we listed the people most often quoted by the media in the smoking debate and rated them according to whether we would want to invite them to dinner.
It was tongue-in-cheek but I’m guessing Ian didn’t get a high rating because the somewhat indignant email read:
When I read your comments I could scarcely believe that I was reading about the same man. Was this Ian Willmore, the [former] media coordinator at Friends of the Earth, who made a point of taking the voluntary press staff out for a decent lunch because they were giving their time to a charity who, frankly, did not much appreciate them; the man who played piano for the FOE staff dos purely to entertain; the guy who was quite prepared to be the subject of his own humour as well as making amusing comments about others; the person who was always larger than life and quite prepared to go his own way, despite the hostility of other more 'po-faced' individuals in the organisations that he joined?
I have been to lunch with him. He is an amusing companion who can talk on a wide variety of subjects, a consumate individualist in a world full of conventionalists and has a wonderful, light sense of humour that manages to laugh at others while still poking fun at himself. Ian Willmore is a man of great passion and he throws himself into those causes for which he works with a zeal few could match.
I posted this on my blog where it provoked a further comment from ... Kathy Jones:
I have known Ian Willmore for many years. He is, as your mystery poster said, funny, intelligent, entertaining, liberal, cultured, generous, well-read and an excellent companion. He is also finding this string highly entertaining.
For the final word, here is Jones again (in the Guardian):
Erratic, impatient and sometimes abrupt, he was also generous and kind. As uncle to eight nieces and nephews, he went to enormous efforts to find out what interested them, stimulating their curiosities and travelling the length of the country to treat them to memorable lunches.
Condolences to family, friends and colleagues.
See Ian Willmore obituary (Guardian)
Reader Comments (2)
How sad to hear of the passing of one so relatively young.
The truth is smoker, non smoker, or smokerphobic, people die at the beginning, middle and end of each generation for a whole variety of reasons and no amount of tax funds to groups like ASH will make any difference at all to how long we live.
Funny to think that chain smoking David Hockney has lived not only a much longer life but also a much more worthwhile one.