Calder’s confession
Monday, May 9, 2022 at 12:30 I admire Simon Calder, the Independent’s travel correspondent, enormously.
In a world where many travel articles are sponsored or the result of freebies, Calder seems genuinely independent (no pun intended).
As a freelance journalist and broadcaster he has also created an extraordinary niche for himself as the go to expert for travel stories on the BBC and elsewhere.
To achieve this he must work very hard and be extremely obliging at all times of day or night. And he does it without ever sounding less than convivial or knowledgeable.
Better still he rarely makes a drama out of a crisis. His contributions are heavy on information but never strident or over-hyped. And if he doesn’t have the answer to something he will admit it.
In other words, Simon Calder is a journalist you can trust.
I admire too the fact that despite the Independent’s long-standing problems (it is now online only) Calder - who joined the paper in 1994 - has remained loyal.
He must I’m sure have received more lucrative offers but the Independent must suit him.
I mention all this because his latest column, published today, is a bit disappointing. It certainly doesn’t live up to the clickbait headline, ‘Smoking confessions of a teenage hitchhiker’.
Essentially it’s about Interrailing around Europe and the fact that:
Thanks to a flash sale marking the 50th anniversary of the scheme, you can buy three months of unlimited travel for just £375.
Aside from the fact that that is phenomenally good value, the subject is framed by the fact that Calder was a teenage smoker whose habit left him too poor to Interrail when he was young.
I’m surprised he would link the two because I met him once, very briefly, in 2012 and he didn’t strike me as someone who would have a pop at smoking.
He was friendly and inquisitive and I liked him at once:
Simon Calder, the Independent's effervescent travel editor, is an expert on holiday breaks long and short and on Saturday we shared a sofa in the Green Room at Television Centre.
Simon is a former smoker but he's not an anti-smoker. He asked me about smoker-friendly destinations and I said I thought that Eastern Europe and cities such as Prague are the most welcoming, although the situation is changing.
Ten years later however he writes:
Smoking, as you know, is both stupid and expensive …
As a teenager in Crawley, nicotine addiction was an easy habit to acquire. And apart from the medical and atmospheric harm it caused, smoking also came with a considerable financial hit.
We are then told that because of his smoking habit buying that ‘precious ticket to all corners of Europe was tantalisingly beyond reach’.
The good news?
I finally gave up smoking aged 34, following a couple of flights on which my fundamental human right to spread noxious gases around the cabin had been banned by the airline.
Now, thanks to Interrail’s 50th anniversary offer:
This is the best of times to be a traveller on the rails of Europe. But no smoking, OK?
Perhaps he’s just pandering to his editors but it’s disappointing that someone I previously thought of as a free spirit should include so many anti-smoking digs in an article about rail travel.
Perhaps I should remind him of his request for information about smoker-friendly holiday destinations.
Speaking of which, any thoughts so I can update this 2012 post?
Reader Comments (3)
Anti smoking is a transmissible disease that one catches by a lack of intellectual hygiene.
That's why I don't read the Independent. I won't read papers that think abusing potential readers is a wise thing to do.
Btw, I never travelled when I was young and when tobacco was dirt cheap because I was not an over privileged arse with any money to spare on anything but rent and food having been born shit poor and pushed out into the world of work in the economic bleak 1970s and recession hit 1980s.
Happily, despite being "stupid" and smoking having been made purposefully more expensive to fund the lifestyles of professional smokerphobics in the anti smoker industry, Since the 1990s I have travelled far more in adulthood that my poor roots should have allowed or my class should permit.
So I am so sorry Mr Calder for ruining your stereo-type. Apologies too to the the anti smoker bullies who try so hard to ensure that my life is totally miserable because I am a smoker.
As for passive smoking, well, most intelligent people know that to be a scam. Only smokerphobics or Metropolitan snobs who look down on those from the working classes and underclasses buy into that idea because it suits their prejudices and funds their professional lives.
I’ve probably said it before on here and elsewhere, but I’ll say it again. No matter what they say before they give up and no matter how hard they try, ex-smokers inexorably and irresistibly morph into anti-smokers in the end, even if it takes years. They can’t help it. And sadly, no amount of hopeful signs in the early days of ex-smokerism ever lasts. As this article, sadly, proves. It's one of the things that most puts me off even considering the possibility of giving up. In many ways, anti-smokers are the best advert for smoking that there is, once you realise that no matter what you do, you will end up like them in the end: not just not smoking, but also adopting all the unpleasant and unattractive personal qualities - even those that have nothing to do with smoking itself - that go along with being an anti-smoker.