Rod Liddle and the stopped smoking brigade

It’s October which means that Stoptober, the annual stop smoking campaign, is once more upon us.

A few years ago, via a series of freedom of information requests, Forest tried to find out how ‘successful’ Stoptober was in terms of persuading smokers to quit.

The results, it’s fair to say, were inconclusive partly because they kept changing the KPIs (key performance indicators).

We also enquired about the cost of the campaign, which ranged – if I remember – from £400,000 one year to £1.2m the next, or vice versa.

Controversially perhaps the cost included payments to various celebrities to promote Stoptober.

In 2015 comedians Al Murray, Rhod Gilbert, Shappi Khorsandi and Bill Bailey were together reported to have been paid £195,000 by Public Health England.

Since then the money spent hiring celebrities such as Strictly’s Craig Revel Horwood has been significantly less but it still adds up.

This year Stoptober is supported by Martin Kemp (ex-Spandau Ballet and EastEnders), singer Sinitta, who also helped promote the 2021 campaign, and James Jordan, a former professional dancer on Strictly.

Not every Stoptober celebrity ‘ambassador’ has given up completely however. Cricketer Phil Tufnell, for example, says he still enjoys the occasional cigarette.

Some will say this shows how hard it is to give up but for every ‘failed’ quitter there is arguably someone who stopped smoking overnight and never touched a cigarette again.

One of them is our old friend Rod Liddle who quit exactly one year ago and has written about it in this week’s Spectator. According to Rod, 'Binning cigarettes was, curiously, a doddle'.

Good luck to him but I can’t help feeling a little sad that Rod’s decision to stop was influenced in part by some of the punitive or petty measures he railed against for years, such as the cost or 'banning people from smoking in the open air, especially railway station platforms'.

It's silly of me perhaps but 'Smoking is more hassle than it’s worth' reads more like a defeat than a victory, although I take on board the 'two immediate health benefits' he mentions.

Nevertheless, when Claire Fox (now Baroness Fox of Buckley) spoke of “reaching for my fags in defiance” a decade ago, I counted Rod and Jeremy Clarkson as members of the same awkward squad of contrarians who weren’t prepared to be bullied by the likes of ASH.

Clarkson quit smoking several years ago, reportedly on health grounds which you can't argue with. Before that however he seemed to credit the smoking ban for helping him cut down, which was no doubt music to ASH’s ears.

Clarkson has yet to become the face of Stoptober and I hope he never does. Ditto Rod, although part of me thinks it would be quite funny if the pair of them were to front next year’s campaign.

Liddle and Large. That would be some team. In the meantime here are some of my favourite moments involving Rod in relation to Forest and/or smoking.

One was when he joined our table at the Savoy Hotel for a gala dinner organised by Forest and Boisdale to mark one of the last evenings diners could eat, drink and smoke in a restaurant before the introduction of the smoking ban on July 1, 2007. He subsequently wrote:

Spent a wonderful valedictory evening chain-smoking at a bash organised by Forest on Monday night ... There were some fine speeches – pugnacious and rabble-rousing from Anthony Worrall-Thompson; politically-loaded and sharp from Andrew Neil; counter-intuitive from the excellent Claire Fox.

Another was his hilarious interview with a councillor in Stony Stratford, Buckinghamshire, whose bid to ban smoking in the town centre was making headlines nationally and globally. It's no longer online but Rod spoke for many when he asked, "Is this man a halfwit?".

A third was his speech at the Forest Freedom Dinner in 2016. Guido Fawkes called it “the best political speech” of the year. Another guest said it was "the best after-dinner speech I've ever heard" and The Spectator published it online, in full, here.

Another piece by Rod, published by The Spectator to coincide with the tenth anniversary of the smoking ban in July 2017, is behind a paywall but the headline speaks for itself – 'Being anti-smoking damages your mental health'.

Five years on I’m very happy for him if he feels healthier for not smoking and doesn't miss it, but – a small plea – don’t become an anti-smoking bore, Rod. I couldn’t bear it!

PS. According to the Daily Mail, ballroom dancer James Jordan quit smoking to honour his late father’s dying wish.

Addressing a Forest meeting at the Conservative conference in Birmingham this week, Claire Fox told the audience of her own father’s dying wish.

It was, she said, not for his daughter to quit smoking (as the rest of her family hoped) but for her to switch to a ‘low tar’ brand of cigarette because, as a smoker himself, her father knew she would never give up because he understood how much she enjoyed it.

Many would dispute whether switching to a 'milder' brand is significantly beneficial but as Claire also pointed out:

"This is my life, not your life. It's my life and whilst I'm a free person I will do things that none of you would approve of, probably. But that's the way we get along in a democratic free society. I don't need to be looked after. If I wanted to be looked after by those who know better I'd move to China or some other authoritarian regime."

Above: Rod Liddle at the Forest Freedom Dinner in 2016 and, below, 2017

Comments

[Pat Nurse]

I think the truth about smoking is that smokers, specially those who have smoked since childhood or youth, do tend to quit when they get older. I have known many who did before the prohibitive ban and public hate campaign made such an issue out of it and many who found it as easy as Rod.

If you want to quit smoking, and it is your choice, then quitting is a doddle. It only becomes really hard if you don't want to quit but feel forced through public pressure or guilt tripping from others.

I have quit smoking in the daytime and don't start smoking until after 5pm in the evening and yes, it is easy. Smoking is not an addiction so much as a distraction so instead of lighting a fag, it is easy to find something else to do. I won't quit because I enjoy smoking and I enjoy it most in the evening which is why I quit in the daytime.

I still keep smoking because of the sanctimonious bullies trying to make life difficult for those who do not buy into their ideological vision of a future with no smokers in it. I will not surrender to the behavioural manipulation. I am not their puppet to be made to dance to the anti smoker industry's tune. As long as I keep smoking I know in my heart that I am free.