James Leavey, cigar aficionado and son of a German U-boat captain, RIP

I was very sorry to read that James Leavey had died, aged 75.

The name may be unfamiliar to many of you but in the Nineties James was commissioned by my predecessor Marjorie Nicholson to write two consumer-friendly guides for smokers.

The Forest Guide to Smoking in London, published in 1997, was followed a year later by the Forest Guide to Smoking in Scotland.

Featuring photographs by Jan Olofsson (‘Sweden’s first rock and roll star’), they attracted quite a lot of interest. The London guide featured a foreword by Auberon Waugh and a ‘Last Word’ by Jeffrey Bernard, The Spectator’s Low Life correspondent.

I remember the launch of the Scotland guide because I was living in Edinburgh at the time and sharing an office in Leith with Brian Monteith, who was then Forest’s spokesman in Scotland.

James was interviewed on Scottish television in a clip that has Brian’s fingerprints all over it because it was filmed by the water in Leith, a short walk from our office. (A low-res video clip has survived and can be viewed on YouTube here.)

James was a keen cigar smoker who wrote for a number of magazines including Cigar Journal and World Tobacco.

He edited JJ Fox's occasional cigar newsletter, The Humidor, and The Harrods Pocket Guide to Fine Cigars, and for three years, before the magazine ceased publication in 2002, he also wrote a column, ‘Sharing an Ashtray’, for Punch that featured conversations with celebrity smokers.

After I joined Forest in 1999 I would bump into him at Forest events.

The first time, I think, was at a party at a restaurant owned by TV chef Antony Worrall Thomson in Notting Hill. Another occasion was an event at Little Havana, a Cuban-inspired bar off Leicester Square.

In December 2007 James claimed to have been the first person to smoke a cigar on Cunard's new ship, the Queen Victoria, and he even sent me a photograph to prove it!

Also on board was a certain Jimmy Savile but, according to James, ‘he kept his cigar in his sock, half smoked’.

Two years later James was a guest speaker at a party to mark Forest’s 30th anniversary. (The event, at Boisdale of Belgravia, also celebrated the publication of Chris Snowdon’s first book, Velvet Glove Iron Fist: A History of Anti-Smoking.)

Occasionally, and sometimes at the recommendation of Forest, James would be invited to discuss or defend smoking on television and radio.

In 2006 he appeared on the BBC Horizon programme, ‘We Love Cigarettes’. In 2012 he was interviewed for another documentary, ‘Timeshift: The Smoking Years’, on BBC4.

In 2001 he also appeared in a wonderful film, Smokers’ Corner, produced and directed by Sharon Peng, a student at Bournemouth University, that featured contributions from several Forest supporters plus a young and hugely charismatic Pete Doherty. (More on that in another post.)

In 2015 James was presented with the The Snow Queen Cigar Writer of the Year award.

Born on December 9, 1947, he died on June 24 but I only found out on Friday when I read his obituary in the Telegraph.

It followed an earlier obituary, published by the Guardian last weekend, which I’m sorry to say I missed.

The Guardian obit was written by his daughter who revealed that her father ‘was born in Beckenham, Kent, to Mary Leavy and Werner Pfeifer, a German U-boat captain and ex-prisoner of war’.

Who knew?!

For Forest supporters of a certain age, however, James will be best remembered for having fought what the Telegraph says was:

a valiant but ultimately unsuccessful campaign against “born-again puritans trying to drive forward a nanny state” by editing quirkily humorous travel guides for smokers.

Former MSP and MEP Brian Monteith writes:

James Leavey was great fun. The fact that I cannot remember a great deal about the book launch, except that his sidekick Jan Olofsson brought a particularly enchanting Cuban lady who gyrated at every opportunity, and many cigars were smoked, suggests much alcohol was involved.

The book created a flurry of interest – simply because someone dared to publicise smoking as an enjoyable pastime to be savoured and celebrated. Sadly, it was one of the last hurrahs of fighting the public health puritans in Scotland and typically needed an outsider to tell the clannish Scottish blob they were going down the wrong path.

Within eight years we had the UK's first smoking ban in all public places and the book became an overnight relic of the past.

See also: James Leavey, writer, actor and cigar devotee who wrote smokers’ guides to tobacco-friendly places – obituary (Telegraph), and James Leavey obituary (Guardian).

Above: James Leavey speaking at a party to mark Forest’s 30th anniversary in 2009; below, James and yours truly at the same event