Times Radio, a former Health Secretary, and me

I was a bit dismissive of Times Radio last week.

It was partly because they interviewed Hazel Cheeseman of ASH on No Smoking Day and it was such a soft and one-sided interview it was ridiculous.

Also, since the station was launched in 2020, Forest has very rarely been invited to appear and I put it down to the fact that The Times (newspaper) is firmly in the tobacco prohibition camp.

On one of the few occasions I have been invited on it was to take part in an item to mark the 50th anniversary of ASH.

Broadcast on December 2, 2021, the item lasted 25 minutes. The main guest, as you might expect, was Deborah Arnott, CEO of ASH.

The other guests were Patricia Hewitt, the former Labour MP who was Secretary of State for Health when the public smoking ban was introduced, anti-smoking campaigner Prof Robert West, and me.

I assumed that my role for the short time I was on air was to play devil’s advocate and cast a more sceptical eye on ASH’s place in history.

Instead I got the distinct impression that the presenter, Matt Chorley, was a bit miffed when I wasn’t as respectful as everyone else.

When Deborah and I began arguing and talking over one another (she started it!) I sensed that the carefully constructed segment had gone a bit Pete Tong and it was clear who Chorley blamed - me!

(See ASH at 50.)

Fast forward to yesterday and following a long absence from the station I was invited to take part in a ten-minute discussion about the Tobacco and Vapes Bill and the UCL study on e-cigarettes that featured as the lead story in The Times yesterday.

It was recorded via Zoom at 6.30pm and broadcast late last night, around 11.30. I was planning to stay up and listen but I fell asleep a few minutes before it was due to be broadcast.

What I can say is, it was one of the more agreeable discussions I’ve been involved in on radio or television.

The presenter was Carole Walker and my fellow guest was Stephen Dorrell, the former Conservative MP (1979-2015) who was Secretary of State for Health under John Major, and chairman of the Health Select Committee from 2010 to 2014.

Politically Dorrell is as wet as they come, although in person he was very friendly. (I think he was relieved that I wasn’t my namesake, the former Conservative Cabinet minister Simon Clarke.)

I had forgotten though that in the aftermath of Brexit he had left the Conservative Party, standing as a Change UK candidate in the 2019 European elections, before joining the Lib Dems and standing as one of their candidates in the 2019 general election.

I expected him to be in favour of the generational tobacco ban, and he was. To be fair, though, while we disagreed on some points, we agreed on others, and it was an amiable and, I think, informative discussion, very well moderated by Carole Walker who gave us plenty of time to speak.

We didn’t interrupt or speak over one another, and we were respectful (I think) of one another’s views.

It helped that although it was an audio only recording we could nevertheless see one another on the Zoom link, so it felt more like a normal conversation.

Either way, it was one of the more enjoyable interviews I’ve done, and I wish this was the norm rather than the more confrontational type of discussion we have come to expect.

You’ll have to take my word for it, though, because I can’t find a link to the programme. If I do I’ll post it here.

PS. I was interested to hear Dorrell suggest that society has moved on and people now expect government to make decisions on their behalf about potentially unhealthy habits and behaviours.

He may be right. Either way, I will return to this another time.

Update: Times Radio programmes appear to be available for a week on the Times Radio app. Downloading the app, and searching for programmes, is pretty straightforward, even for me.

Comments

[Pat Nurse]

Some people may want Government telling them how to live their lives and forcing them to live how they're told by the introduction of legislation that criminalises them for disobeying but many other profoundly disagree and we used to live in a country that was free and allowed for opinions and tastes that differ from government or the alleged "majority".

Many people much prefer to be in control of their own lives without feeling that Government owns them, mind, body and soul.

To Sunak, Arnott, Cheeseman, and any other lobbyists or Nannying politician I say : My Life. My Choice. My Business. Butt out and mind your own business, enjoy your own life, but don't think for one minute that you have any right to tell me how to live mine.

Criminalising future adults who might start smoking is not progressive and not something to be proud of. Shame on you. You have just made smoking even more dangerous than you say it is and you have handed a huge money making business to criminals where, for the first time ever in its history, it will be unregulated, uncontrolled and managed by the sort of people who won't ask for ID when pushing it on children.