Between them they have served the tobacco control industry for 31 years.
Yet official recognition for their devoted service to the nanny state continues to elude Deborah Arnott, CEO of ASH UK since 2003, and Sheila Duffy, director of ASH Scotland since 2008.
I’ve been monitoring every New Year or Birthday honours list since 2013 and although the directors of Smokefree South West and Tobacco Free Futures (neither of which are still in business) and Fresh North East have been honoured, similar awards for their arguably more senior and influential counterparts have remained surprisingly elusive.
I can’t imagine why but there is some good news. Linda Bauld, chair of public health at the University of Edinburgh, has been awarded an OBE in the Queen’s Birthday Honours list announced last night.
Interestingly the award would appear to have been prompted by her role as advisor to the Scottish Government on Covid rather than her ongoing commitment to tobacco control, although that may have been taken into account.
Either way it would be churlish of me not to congratulate her on her award. As anti-smoking campaigners go, Linda is one of the more approachable ones.
As for Deborah and Sheila - there’s always next time!
PS. Deborah and I will be discussing smoking with presenter Darryl Morris on TalkRadio at 10.35 tonight.
This is my third appearance on TalkRadio in a week and I always seem to get the graveyard slots!
Mind you, it could be worse. A few weeks ago I was on LBC at 2.00am.