Part 2 (2/2)

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 a betrayal As a matter of fact, I rarely smoked a pipe in public anyway For the most part I was a Marlboro hts, but Mummy Bear Marlboro Mediued, middle brow, middle class, middle rank, middle tar that's me I reserved the old briar pipes for winter h 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 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 newspaper in the summer of 2003, I cannot remember the purpose; perhaps it was to coincide with the first series of the television prograood reason I turned up at the appointed place with a pipe in arettes and started in on it A week later, to accompany the interview, there appeared a picture ofout of le, a thick cloud of s features Sadlythe and why had I s back, I noonder if at sonized that a pipe would suit the rather professorial side to my character that QI QI e out to , 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 fro me that I had been elected that year's Pipe S absurdity caivethat, if it had chanced to be a bonobo who had been featured on the front page of the e out to , 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 fro me that I had been elected that year's Pipe S absurdity caivethat, if it had chanced to be a bonobo who had been featured on the front page of the Independent Independent sone to itdesperate is, I suppose, the word to describe the worshi+pful coiven the forthcoood cause sone to itdesperate is, I suppose, the word to describe the worshi+pful coiven the forthcoood cause

Now there I sat, three years later, fiddling withcause 'Betrayal' and 'cause' are perhaps hysterical and self-i to me as a cause; it had always sy enormous I have mentioned Sherlock Holmes, but the fact is that alures who happened to smoke, but more than that, active, proud and positive smokers They didn't just smoke in the world, they s enormous I have mentioned Sherlock Holmes, but the fact is that alures who happened to smoke, but more than that, active, proud and positive smokers They didn't just smoke in the world, they smoked at at the world Oscar Wilde was one of the pioneers of the cigarette When he o, the the world Oscar Wilde was one of the pioneers of the cigarette When he o, the cher maitre cher maitre's major obsession was as arettes as with his equally abundant supply of fresh, high-quality epigrams Wilde's first episode of real notoriety cae to ht of Lady Winderarette between his fingers a casual detail that enraged h to mention in just about every press report and in the letters and diaries of those who had been present with a cigarette between his fingers a casual detail that enraged h to mention in just about every press report and in the letters and diaries of those who had been present

'A cigarette is the perfect type of a perfect pleasure,' says Lord Henry Wotton in The Picture of Dorian Gray The Picture of Dorian Gray 'It is exquisite, and it leaves one unsatisfied' It tooktime, as with so many of Wilde's remarks, to understand that this was actually lance appeared The point is that a pleasure which leaves you satisfied stops being a pleasure the mo ot from it sex and food are pleasures of this kind What follows? A touch of afterglow if you are that sort of person, but ust You don't want any more of that kind of pleasure for some time to come As for behaviour modifiers like alcohol and narcotics, one may want more and more, but they alter over that co to the spirits But a cigarettea cigarette delivers the keen joy, the hug of gratification, and then nothing ain And so on No over or hly evolved virus, it attaches itself to the brain of the user such that its only purpose is to induce them to have another There is a reward for that in the form of pleasure, but the reward is too short-lived to be called satisfaction

I had then Holart and Bette Davis, Noel Coward and Toainst us? Bourgeois nose-wrinklers, sour health-ers, Hitler, Goebbels and Bernard Shaw, cranks, puritans and interfering prigs Sn of the rejection of middle-class prudery and respectability, and I was a whale on that, despite being in my heart of hearts as middle class, unadventurous and respectable as anyone I knew One has, after all, no one to convince in these matters but oneself If I was to ally myself with outsiders, artists, radicals and revolutionaries then it was natural that I would smoke and smoke proudly I know Pathetic, isn't it?

I have said nothing of death here Nothing of the ravages to the coarettes wreak What Oscar did not know is that thelittle cylinders of joy is the gradualness gradualness of their toxicity, the imperceptibly nuanced encroachnity (after the clain s slowness and delicacy hich they set about their business of killing, the irresistibly tely unbridgeable a distance between present pleasure and future pay and diabolical subtlety delivers what a true sadist and connoisseur of pain would surely consider the highest pitch of the exquisite of their toxicity, the imperceptibly nuanced encroachnity (after the clain s slowness and delicacy hich they set about their business of killing, the irresistibly tely unbridgeable a distance between present pleasure and future pay and diabolical subtlety delivers what a true sadist and connoisseur of pain would surely consider the highest pitch of the exquisite

I had been a erent ene with the Dunhill ed Inasretted there was so life as a non-smoker I had enjoyed well over thirty years of tobacco use and noas to see what life would be like without it I was aled never ever to be intolerant of those fellow ss with drugs I had heard about a pill called Zyban, a proprietary name for amfebutamone, better known in America as Welbutrin, one of the most prescribed anti-depressants in the world I had read so cessation aid' in almost 30 per cent of cases I called up my doctor's secretary and made an appointment He wrote out a prescription for a three-week course In the same way that these pills, in order to counter depression, acted on the brain's own store of mood elevators noradrenaline and dopamine and so on so they acted, it was claimed, to calm, inhibit and allay the anxieties and horrors of nicotine withdrawal The unusual and appealing thing was that you were told to take the pill and carry on s would leave you, if you were one of the 27 per cent on whom the treatment worked

And you knohat? It turned out that I was

It was a

I fly to America, for the first time in my life happy to spend twelve and a half hours on an aeroplane without being reduced to the indignity of nicotine-replaceums and inhalers sometimes, in the bad old days, all three at once

On the fourth Thursday of Nove Day in the United States, I have awith the film-maker Peter Jackson, for whoreat raid on the German dams of the Ruhr in 1943 A masterpiece of British cinema had already been made on the Dambusters story, of course, but we hoped to be able to tell it again, incorporating details that in 1954 were too sensitive or secret to reveal

I arrive at the Beverly Hills Hotel bungalow that Peter has taken for the duration of his stay, and we talk over the details Fran, Peter's wife, is present as well as otherDay is a perfect ti if, like us, you are not American

When the conference is over an assistant loads into the boot of nut has asseinable archival resource on the subject of the Daraphic forether for my convenience There is even a facsimile of R C Sherriff's screenplay of the 1954 Michael Anderson fil Sunset Boulevard, into West Hollywood and towards the Chateau Marmont, the hotel where I have taken an apartment-like set of rooms for the month or so I have to deliver the screenplay

I spend a happy evening going through the docu How pleasant it all is How lucky I a of a commotion next door, and I look out into the corridor to see the actress Lindsay Lohan being stretchered away It seeht up with her The Chateau Mar the scene of John Belushi+'s final fatal speedball It is still a favourite haunt of Hollywood's more raffish party element, and Lindsay Lohan's unfortunate overdose, while not fatal, excites s that do not need to worry me

The next day I a to make a start on the script I cook myself an omelette and brew up an enormous pot of coffee the suites in the Chateau coraphs of Guy Gibson, Barnes Wallis and a Lancaster bomber Blu-tacked up on the wall to inspire reeable?

But there is a problem

A terrible probleo to the keyboard and I force them to type out

FADE IN:

INT THE AIR MINISTRY EVENING, 1940 And that is as far as I can get

Ridiculous

I stand up and walk about the room This can be noproject The original filht to tinker with this et on with it, Stephen

But it is more than that As I stare at the screen I feel that there is a void insideblack hole that is soer, fear, dread and pain?

I shakefrom a bath

It will pass

I leave the roo gossip on the subject of Lindsay Lohan's draht before

I pace around the pool Jerry Stiller, coths

'Hiya, kid,' he calls out I do love, at the age of forty-nine, to be called kid

After ten or twenty circuits I return to the room and sit once more before the screen

The black hole is still there

This is all terribly, terribly wrong

What can it be? What can can it be? Am I ill? it be? Am I ill?

And then with a bolt of certainty that almost knocks arette I cannot write without a cigarette

It can't be true Surely?

For the next three hours I try everything I can to get the writing juices going, but by midday I realize that it is useless Either I do not deliver the screenplay or I smoke I lift the telephone receiver

'hello, it's Stephen here Could you send up a carton of Marlboro please? Yes a whole carton Ten packs Thanks Bye'

Fast forward to April the following year, 2007 In July the ban on shout the United Kingdom, and the ive up once and for all I have been hypnotized by Paul McKenna in an atte in iven a session at the Allen Carr 'Easy Way' clinic in London Neither seerateful as I aood news

A new drug has arrived Farewell Zyban, hello Champix, Pfizer's name for a new compound called varenicline, which is not an anti-depressant but a 'nicotinic receptor partial agonist' What could be whatter?

I have a course prescribed and, as with the Zyban, I continue s has happened On about the tenth day I notice thatstubs I have taken no more than one puff froarettes out of the pack, staring at the this ti QI QI two or three tier buying packs of cigarettes I have stopped s two or three tier buying packs of cigarettes I have stopped s for a new series of Kingdodom When this concludes at the end of September I fly to America to start work on a travel series

The real test comes later, however In May 2008 I return to Britain from Hawaii, the last state to be visited for the documentary, and I need to sit down to write the book of the series Only noill I see if I can, for the first ti s without consuarette as I type

It seems, when that day dawns, that my thirty-five-year relationshi+p with tobacco really is over

Writing these words as I have been, sitting in front of a coe returned? The experience has not opened up that black hole, but somewhere, deep inside on in a cave sleeping a restless sleep