Fagged out

Yes, I know you haven't heard from me for a while, but reports that I had expired from some smoking-related disease are somewhat exaggerated. I have never felt better, and yes, I am still enjoying my six packs of Rottmin's Blue a day - and savouring every single one - right down to the filter. Smoking cigarettes never killed anyone - and that's official.

Take my dear old pa, God rest his soul. He smoked like a village bakery from the age of 10. And when he died, a healthy looking 94 (he was actually 49, but he looked 94) it was definitely not the fags that did for him. And I can prove it. At his autopsy the pathologist told me personally that his lungs showed no sign of damage by cigarettes. And no, it wasn't because when he expired he had no lungs left to damage. He died as a result of medical negligence. There he was - the poor old bugger - gasping his last in St Luke's ITU, pleading with the nurses to give him a cigarette. But they refused and naturally he died. I will always maintain that had he been given a smoke or two, he'd still be alive today.

This current, totally misguided assault on us smokers is the modern-day equivalent of the Spanish Inquisition. It's fashionable to have it in for us smokers. Ridiculous!

And let's not forget the aesthetic aspects of smoking. Dedicated heavy smokers will - in no time at all - find that their fingers take on a most fetching delicate yellowish brown hue, which is both most attractive and extremely chic.

And that's another thing: Non-smokers are continuously complaining that our coughing, hacking and expectorating is both disgusting and unhealthy. Nothing could be further from the truth. Don't these miseries realise that a good old cough, hack and splat is essential exercise for the lungs? At least it was when I had any lungs. The last piece of mine came up with a particularly vigorous eruction some weeks ago, just before they popped me into this respirator.

Yes, it's at times like this that I turn to our patron saint of smokers St Ambrose Borscht Cardomah. I light a cheroot at the shrine to him in my local smoke-easy, drop to my knees (That's before I was confined to a respirator, naturally) and croak: "St Bocc forgive them, for they know not what they prohibit."

And - would you believe it - when they think they have got us down or on the ropes, they go further and are even criticising our diet. Ludicrous. I'd have thought that a good nourishing meal of 15 Rottmin's Blue and a spectacular blast would provide enough nourishment to get anyone through to their next cigarette.

A close friend, a very, very close friend - in fact, for a while he was lying in the next respirator to mine, fell victim to these institutionalised killjoys, who have tried throughout his life to prevent him pursuing one of man's fundamental rights: The right to smoulder his way to an early grave. His valiant struggle to persuade one of our heartless warders (They call them nurses, ha!) to put a fag into my friend's mouth and light it, is beyond belief. As he said to me, just before he expired through nicotine deprivation: "Sly, I think this is it! It's all over for me. Not even half a du Maurier would the heartless bitch light for me. I leave you my 60 cartons of Rizla papers and my half ton of full-strength tobacco. Enjoy." And he was gone. Never again to know the unutterable pleasure of an early morning's ciggy and a 20- minute cough. Life really isn't fair.

All you people out there, all you pleasure-destroying non-smokers please, please try to come to terms with the fact that you are wrong. Smoking does not kill, it is a life-enhancing experience that should be encouraged. Smoking is a lifetime's commitment - a somewhat truncated lifetime maybe - but nonetheless a lifeti.... Urgh!