I once met …

Self-help guru Paul McKenna has been sharing with readers of The Sun an ‘exclusive 25-minute hypnosis’ video that helps people quit smoking.

'Self-help guru' and 'life coach' are not descriptions I normally warm to but I bumped into McKenna once, many years ago, and he was very nice.

We were at Western House (later renamed Wogan House) in London waiting to be interviewed on Radio 2.

We weren’t on together because I was there to talk about smoking and he was there to promote a new book about something else, but we had a short chat while we sat outside the studio.

In fact, he instigated the conversation which was quite unusual.

I’ve sat in many green rooms with many ‘celebrities’ and it’s rare that they initiate a conversation with someone they’ve never met, let alone show an interest in that person by asking questions about their job.

It’s so rare that only two people stand out - Tony Blackburn, who I spoke to when we were waiting to record a pilot for a Marcus Brigstocke talk show over 20 years ago, and Paul McKenna.

Knowing McKenna helped people stop smoking I expected a negative reaction when he asked me what I did, but he wasn’t judgemental or anti-smoking at all.

Like Tony Blackburn, he was extremely personable and I liked him immediately.

I had a slightly different experience when I met another quit smoking guru, the late Allan Carr, in a BBC studio in Manchester.

It was on January 4, 2004, and we were about to appear on The Heaven and Earth Show, a Sunday morning programme that ran from 1998 to 2007 on BBC1 and addressed spiritual and moral issues.

The date should give you a clue that we had been booked to talk about a possible workplace smoking ban, which the Labour government was considering, under pressure from the tobacco control industry.

To my surprise Carr was opposed to a smoking ban, but not for the same reasons as me. In his view it would lead to smokers ‘binge smoking’ when they left the office at lunch or after work.

However, while we were both opposed to a ban, it would be wrong to say we saw eye to eye on anything else and I found him quite intense. As I wrote later:

I enjoyed The Heaven and Earth Show. I got to meet quit smoking guru Allen Carr, a strange little man, quite different from the smooth-talking salesman I had imagined. Although he gave up his 100-a-day habit 20 years ago, he's still addicted to smoking, albeit in a rather different way. Even in the green room he and his wife (they now live in Malaga) found it difficult to talk about anything else.

To be honest, I was surprised he talked to me at all off air because I was led to believe he could be extremely hostile to anyone who had connections with the tobacco industry, which he seemed to blame for his own smoking habit all those years before.

He died from lung cancer, aged 72, two years later, but although there was no meeting of minds on the wider issue of smoking, we didn’t part on bad terms.

We simply didn't agree and I didn't want to get into an argument with him or his wife off air. (They were clearly devoted to one another, although she said very little.)

While I’m name dropping I might as well mention a third celebrity whose easy charm and interest in others impressed me enormously when I met her.

Emma Forbes was a presenter on Saturday morning children’s TV in the Nineties. The daughter of actress Nanette Newman and film producer Bryan Forbes, she was a regular contributor on The Alan Titchmarsh Show on ITV when our paths crossed in 2009 and she could not have been nicer.

I’ve just Googled her name and it seems she moved to America a few years ago with her husband and children and they have no plans to return, at least not permanently.

Who can blame them?!