To quit or not to quit

I've always had a sneaking admiration for Keith Richards.

Not for his music. Apart from a handful of songs I've never been a fan of the Rolling Stones.

Instead, and even though his hedonistic lifestyle would have killed many other people long before they were of pensionable age, there's something about Richards' attitude to life it's impossible not to like.

I particularly enjoyed his 2014 autobiography, noting his 'sense of humour and live and let live philosophy'.

In 2016 director Julian Temple made a wonderful documentary about Richards that was broadcast on BBC2.

'Like David Hockney,' I wrote, 'Richards is rarely interviewed without a burning cigarette in his hand and Temple's documentary was no exception.'

Unlike Hockney however Richards, 78, has now quit smoking.

His decision to stop was first reported in 2020 ('The Rolling Stones’ Keith Richards has finally quit smoking') and it's in the news again because of an interview he gave CBS – broadcast on Sunday – in which he said:

"Sometimes, you know, a bell rings, something inside says, ‘Hey, pal – enough!’ So I just put the hammer on it.

"It’s funny, I don’t think about it much anymore. I got a few [nicotine] patches for a few weeks.

"Luckily I don’t miss it and that makes me feel good."

What I like about his comments are the matter-of-fact tone. There's no hint of self-righteousness and no suggestion he's become a no-smoking bore and believes other people should quit too.

He was "probably getting on a bit", he says, and decided to stop. That's it.

Moreover, after smoking for 55 years, he effectively quit cold turkey apart from 'a few patches'.

(Hallelujah for that! Can you imagine how smug some vaping advocates would have been had he quit using an e-cigarette? We'd never have heard the last of it!)

Anyway, in related news, I was talking about this with someone yesterday and he reminded me of something a fairly well known doctor and columnist once said.

I paraphrase the good doctor because I don't have the exact quote to hand but it was something along the lines of:

If you smoke you should probably quit in your mid thirties (as many smokers do when they become parents) but if you take it up again in old age (ie your seventies) it probably won't do you much harm or make a significant difference to your overall health because most illnesses caused by smoking are the result of decades of smoking.

That was the gist of it, I think. If I can find the exact quote I will.

Meanwhile David Hockney continues to smoke without having had a mid life break and he's 84 now so we all have different tolerances and constitutions which is something the anti-smoking lobby won't admit.

The point about Hockney is that he smokes because he still enjoys it and he thinks it's good for his mental health. (Better to smoke cigarettes than be prescribed pharmaceutical drugs seems to be his view.)

And that's his choice, just as Keith Richards' choice was to quit smoking at 76.

Good luck to them both, I say. More important, let smokers make such decisions for themselves!