Great Scott wins Cigar Smoker of the Year
Monday, December 11, 2023 at 15:07 Actor Dougray Scott, currently starring in series two of Vigil (BBC1), was crowned Cigar Smoker of the Year at Boisdale of Canary Wharf last week.
I couldn’t go because I had something else on and, to be honest, I’m not a huge fan of award dinners, many of which are over-long, chaotic, or both.
But that’s just me. Others enjoy them enormously.
The event was launched in 2013 as The Spectator Cigar Smoker of the Year awards.
I wrote about it here and re-reading that ten-year-old post I am reminded that I was invited to present an award for ‘Best Cigar Terrace’, which I don’t remember at all.
MC was The Spectator’s Andrew Neil and the star guests were Simon LeBon and David Soul.
Since then guests and award winners have included some stellar Hollywood stars, notably Arnold Schwarzenegger, Burt Reynolds, and Charlie Sheen.
Jonathan Ross and Jeremy Irons have also featured so credit to the organisers.
This year, in addition to Dougray Scott, guests included fellow actors Ray Winstone and Kelsey Grammer.
Grammer has attended the event several times and whenever he’s in the UK (his wife is British) there’s every chance you’ll find him at Boisdale with a fine cigar.
(I once sat at the same table as Grammer for an impromptu late night dinner. Unfortunately we were at opposite ends so I didn’t get to speak to him. From what I could tell, however, he seemed very nice and down-to-earth.)
Anyway, since The Spectator helped launch the Cigar Smoker of the Year awards in 2013 there has been a revolving door of sponsors. (This year the principal sponsor was Santa Rita, a brand of Chilean wine.)
Nevertheless the event appears to be in good health, unlike the Pipe Smoker of the Year luncheon that succumbed to an increasingly small field of famous pipe smokers and was knocked on the head 20 years ago.
From 1964 to 2003, however, it was something of an institution with the award - presented at London’s Savoy Hotel - going to some very famous people including Harold Wilson (1965 and 1976), Eric Morecambe (1970), Edward Fox (1980), Henry Cooper (1984), Ian Botham (1988), Tony Benn (1992), and Ranulph Fiennes (1994).
The final award went to Stephen Fry in 2003 but this was a last hurrah, the writing having been on the wall for several years.
Today I would be hard pushed to think of a single well-known pipe smoker. Even the Lords and Commons Pipe and Cigar Smokers’ Club has been renamed the Lords and Commons Cigar Club.
At this point I ought to say that former Forest chairman, the late Lord Harris of High Cross, would be turning in his grave.
However, after a lifetime of smoking a pipe, even he quit the habit a year or two before he died in 2006.
See: Santa Rita Cigar Smoker of the Year Dinner and Awards 2023 (Cigar Journal)
Reader Comments (1)
I adore Dougray Scott. If you haven't seen it on ITVX, take a look at both series of CRIME. Scott plays the lead role of a somewhat emotionally damaged police detective and he is absolutely brilliant in it.