On No Smoking Day 25 years ago we organised a smoker-friendly fry-up at Simpson’s-in-the-Strand in London.
Those were the days when you could still eat and smoke in some of Britain’s finest restaurants so we invited 16 or 17 people to join us for a champagne breakfast that included Cumberland sausage, honeydew bacon, black pudding, devilled kidneys, fried bread, fried eggs, hash browns, grilled tomato, grilled mushrooms, baked beans … and cigars.
Guests included Lord Harris of High Cross (chairman of Forest for 20 years until his death in 2006), Tom Assheton (MD, Tomtom Cigars), and Claire Fox (director of the Academy of Ideas and now Baroness Fox of Buckley).
Claire is on the right, above, with Lord Harris directly behind her. Tom is at the back, in the centre.
At the time Forest employed four full-time staff. I’m on the left, Juliette Torres is at the front (centre), Martin Ball is next to her, and behind them is office manager Jenny Sharkey who went on to work for Theresa May for the next 20+ years.
Russell Lewis, the distinguished looking gentleman in the centre of the picture (behind Juliette), was a non-executive director of Forest for 30 years until his death at the age of 96 in 2022.
Other guests that day included journalists Lauren Booth (half sister of Cherie Blair) and the Evening Standard’s Pete Clark.
Pete (who died last year) wrote a very funny piece about the event for the Standard, and I think Lauren may have mentioned it in the New Statesman, for which she was writing a column at the time. (She's pictured below, with Pete on the far right.)
Another guest in the photo below was writer and cigar aficionado James Leavey, author of The Forest Guide to Smoking in London (1997). James (with the beard) died in 2023.
Also present was Clive Turner, former director of public affairs at the Tobacco Advisory Council (later renamed the Tobacco Manufacturers’ Association). As I explained here, I first met Clive in 1989 when I was a freelance journalist, and we kept in touch long after he retired.
He wrote an article about our No Smoking Day breakfast for the Forest magazine Free Choice, noting that:
Forest chairman Lord Harris of High Cross urged people to put two fingers up to intolerance and, as your correspondent discovered, the party was both hugely enjoyable and a small blow against the unremitting necessity the state seems to have to monitor and regulate individual enjoyment and pleasure.
Simpson’s closed during the pandemic and has yet to reopen. According to one report, however, it was due to re-open in May 2025.
I don’t know if that is still the case but I’ll keep you posted because it’s an iconic establishment and it would be great to have it back.
