Forest in Paris

It’s the 40th anniversary of No Smoking Day today.

Twenty-five years ago, shortly after I joined Forest, we marked the event by sending a crack team of supporters to Paris.

The aim was to escape the annual nagathon by spending the day in what was then considered the European capital of smoking.

No Smoking Day was still a major event in 1999 and our trip attracted quite a lot of interest.

I stayed in London to manage media calls while my colleague Juliette Torres (above) did a series of interviews from the smoking coach on board the Eurostar train, and again when the group arrived in Paris.

On arrival at Gard du Nord they were met by a delegation from Le Calumet de la Paix (the French equivalent of Forest) who had arranged to host a lunch in our honour at a restaurant used by the Resistance during the war.

Other members of the party included Forest chairman, Lord Harris of High Cross, and our office manager Jenny Sharkey.

We were also joined by Bob Shields, chief feature writer for the Daily Record, and the result was a very funny double page spread in Scotland’s biggest selling national newspaper.

I think Bob enjoyed himself because a few months later he joined us again to receive our Smoker-Friendly Journalist of the Year award at a party at Little Havana, a Cuban-style cigar bar off Leicester Square in London.

His prize was a novelty lighter in the form of a replica hand grenade. It was made of metal and was the size of a real hand grenade. Bob was delighted. Unfortunately it was confiscated by security staff at Gatwick shortly before he boarded his flight home to Glasgow!

But Bob’s story doesn’t end there. Since retiring from the Daily Record in 2008, he’s written a weekly column for the Ayrshire Post, where his career began.

He also bought the Twa Dugs, a bar in Ayr, and two years ago, aged 66, he stood as an independent candidate and was elected on to South Ayrshire Council.

As he told Dram (Councillor Bob Shields):

I have been listening to my regulars complaining about the town for years and I knew what mattered to them. I also knew what the local council kept getting wrong. I used to put suggestions in my regular column in the Ayrshire Post but no one bothered, but many readers would tell me that they agreed with me. They used to say, “What can we do, how can we get things right?” I would suggest they tried changing things with their vote or stand to be an independent, then I thought I was being a bit hypocritical by asking other people to do it and not putting myself forward. That is how it all started. To change the council we had to change the councillors.

See also: Legendary columnist Bob Shields says farewell to Daily Record (October 21, 2008)

Below: Bob Shields before boarding the train at the original Eurostar terminal at Waterloo Station on Wednesday March 10, 1999