way of Tony Benn and Fred Trueman, they had represented something rather splendid that has since gone out of British life. Neither smart, nor sophisticated, nor stylish, they were the kind of people you picture devoting their Sundays either to grappling with the garden hose and waxing the Wolseley or to brisk fell-walking, a canvas haversack on their backs and long woolly socks up to their knees.
Dunhill and the event’s organizers went to great trouble to make me my special pipe, mix me my own blend of tobacco and embrace me as one of their own. Now there I was just three years later, planning to leave the fold. It seemed like abetrayal. As a matter of fact, I rarely smoked a pipe in public anyway. For the most part I was a Marlboro man. Not full-on Marlboro Reds, nor anaemic Marlboro Lights, but Mummy Bear Marlboro Mediums – for the compromiser in life. Middle aged, middle brow, middle class, middle rank, middle tar – that’s me. I reserved the old briar pipes for winter months and lonely hours at the writing desk. Although there had been just one recent occasion when I did go out into the world with a pipe …
I was being profiled in the
Independent
newspaper in the summer of 2003, I cannot remember the purpose; perhaps it was to coincide with the first series of the television programme
QI
. For no good reason I turned up at the appointed place with a pipe in my pocket. At some stage I must have run out of cigarettes and started in on it. A week later, to accompany the interview, there appeared a picture of me on the cover of the newspaper with the pipe jutting out of my face at an angle, a thick cloud of smoke artfully half concealing my smug features. Sadly my features know no other way of arranging themselves except smugly. Why had I taken the pipe along and why had I smoked it in the presence of a photographer? Looking back, I now wonder if at some entirely subconscious level I had recognized that a pipe would suit the rather professorial side to my character that
QI
emphasized and maybe that is why I had pocketed it when setting out to meet the journalist. What is interesting, or at least revealing, about the nature of twenty-first-century celebrity, is that it was only a few days after the publication of that interview that a letter arrived from the British Pipesmokers’ Council advising me that I had been elected that year’s Pipe Smoker of the Year. This charming absurdity came so hard on the heelsof the article that it was bound to give me the feeling that, if it had chanced to be a bonobo who had been featured on the front page of the
Independent
smoking a pipe that week, then the accolade would surely have gone to it … desperate is, I suppose, the word to describe the worshipful company of pipe smokers and tobacco blenders. And given the forthcoming demise of the award, perhaps their desperation had good cause.
Now there I sat, three years later, fiddling with my prize pipe and contemplating a betrayal of the smoking cause. ‘Betrayal’ and ‘cause’ are perhaps hysterical and self-important words to use, but smoking to me
was
a cause; it had always symbolized in my mind something enormous. I have mentioned Sherlock Holmes, but the fact is that almost all my heroes were not just figures who happened to smoke, but more than that, active, proud and positive smokers. They didn’t just smoke in the world, they smoked
at
the world. Oscar Wilde was one of the pioneers of the cigarette. When he met Victor Hugo, the
cher maître
’s major obsession was as much with Wilde’s abundant supply of fresh, high-quality cigarettes as with his equally abundant supply of fresh, high-quality epigrams. Wilde’s first episode of real notoriety came when he took to the stage to make his bow after the triumphant first night of
Lady Windermere’s Fan
with a cigarette between his fingers – a casual detail that enraged many present and was considered worthy enough to mention in just about every press report and in
Dunhill and the event’s organizers went to great trouble to make me my special pipe, mix me my own blend of tobacco and embrace me as one of their own. Now there I was just three years later, planning to leave the fold. It seemed like abetrayal. As a matter of fact, I rarely smoked a pipe in public anyway. For the most part I was a Marlboro man. Not full-on Marlboro Reds, nor anaemic Marlboro Lights, but Mummy Bear Marlboro Mediums – for the compromiser in life. Middle aged, middle brow, middle class, middle rank, middle tar – that’s me. I reserved the old briar pipes for winter months and lonely hours at the writing desk. Although there had been just one recent occasion when I did go out into the world with a pipe …
I was being profiled in the
Independent
newspaper in the summer of 2003, I cannot remember the purpose; perhaps it was to coincide with the first series of the television programme
QI
. For no good reason I turned up at the appointed place with a pipe in my pocket. At some stage I must have run out of cigarettes and started in on it. A week later, to accompany the interview, there appeared a picture of me on the cover of the newspaper with the pipe jutting out of my face at an angle, a thick cloud of smoke artfully half concealing my smug features. Sadly my features know no other way of arranging themselves except smugly. Why had I taken the pipe along and why had I smoked it in the presence of a photographer? Looking back, I now wonder if at some entirely subconscious level I had recognized that a pipe would suit the rather professorial side to my character that
QI
emphasized and maybe that is why I had pocketed it when setting out to meet the journalist. What is interesting, or at least revealing, about the nature of twenty-first-century celebrity, is that it was only a few days after the publication of that interview that a letter arrived from the British Pipesmokers’ Council advising me that I had been elected that year’s Pipe Smoker of the Year. This charming absurdity came so hard on the heelsof the article that it was bound to give me the feeling that, if it had chanced to be a bonobo who had been featured on the front page of the
Independent
smoking a pipe that week, then the accolade would surely have gone to it … desperate is, I suppose, the word to describe the worshipful company of pipe smokers and tobacco blenders. And given the forthcoming demise of the award, perhaps their desperation had good cause.
Now there I sat, three years later, fiddling with my prize pipe and contemplating a betrayal of the smoking cause. ‘Betrayal’ and ‘cause’ are perhaps hysterical and self-important words to use, but smoking to me
was
a cause; it had always symbolized in my mind something enormous. I have mentioned Sherlock Holmes, but the fact is that almost all my heroes were not just figures who happened to smoke, but more than that, active, proud and positive smokers. They didn’t just smoke in the world, they smoked
at
the world. Oscar Wilde was one of the pioneers of the cigarette. When he met Victor Hugo, the
cher maître
’s major obsession was as much with Wilde’s abundant supply of fresh, high-quality cigarettes as with his equally abundant supply of fresh, high-quality epigrams. Wilde’s first episode of real notoriety came when he took to the stage to make his bow after the triumphant first night of
Lady Windermere’s Fan
with a cigarette between his fingers – a casual detail that enraged many present and was considered worthy enough to mention in just about every press report and in
Similar Books
