"Filthy Bastard!"

Picture the scene: it is summertime in Scotland. A light breeze, about 22C, and I have the week off. This was around 15 years ago.

It's mid-week and I grab a newspaper from the shop and pop into the pub on the high street. It's 11 in the morning and I am the only customer. Steve, the landlord, says hello, asks after my family, and pours me a pint of Boddingtons. I pay him and slope off to the rear of the pub and take a table near the open window. With the front doors being flung wide, there is a nice through-breeze. I sit watching the door. This is a habit I cannot seem to lose. Ever since my army days I am hugely uncomfortable if I ever have to sit with my back to the main door. I will move heaven and earth to sit with my back to a wall where I can see who comes and goes. I also check out all the exits before I relax.

So there I am. A cold pint on a warm day and a newspaper in front of me. I light up a smoke, inhale deeply and watch the smoke lazily make a bid for freedom out through the open window. I am at peace with the world. No worries at home, no worries at work, and blissfully unaware of the path my life will take some 14 years into the future.

Twenty minutes later, a guy walks into the bar. He is around 40, balding, soggy in the middle but not obese, glasses, sweaty forehead, wearing jeans, trainers and a black t-shirt. He orders a Coke. I am reading my paper but I hear him muttering under his breath. I can't make out what he is saying but I am finding it distracting. I look up and I catch his glare. That seemed to be his invitation to come over to talk to me.

He is stood in front of my table, looking down at me. He stares just long enough for me to get ready for...whatever comes next.

He starts: "That's a filthy habit you've got there".

Me: "Really? Well, worry not. It doesn't affect you".

Him: "It's fucking disgusting. I hate smokers".

Me: "Look, why don't you go back to your Coke and leave me be?"

Him, voice rising, (Steve looks over, with his eyebrows raised, I nod back, silently telling him I have it under control), "No, I fucking won't! It's high time we normal people stood up to you filthy bastards! The damage you do is far-reaching! You are making us suffer!"

I stand up. This has gone far enough for me. "Listen fuckhead, either piss off back to your place at the bar or I will get violent. I will end you." (This was delivered in a quiet tone, relaxed, but deadly sounding).

Him: "Filthy bastard!". And off he goes. He takes a quick swig of his drink and with one final sneer at me, he leaves. Steve looks at me, shakes his head and apologises. "Not your fault mate, " says I, "Nutters everywhere".

I finish my pint, order another, do the crossword, and head home.

And that would normally be the end of the story. Just a brief altercation with an intolerant, foul-mouthed anti-smoker. Contrary to popular belief, they are very rare these anti-smokers. This one, and the fat lady I wrote about yesterday, are the only two I have ever met, face to face. Which is remarkable really. I have been smoking for 37 years and only met two.

Anyway, fast forward 3 months. I'm up early as I am heading to the heliport in Dyce (Aberdeen) for a 9 am check-in. I am having coffee and toast when the Press & Journal pops through the letter-box. And right there on the front page is my pal the sneering anti-smoker. The headline is "Paedophile Sentenced To 15 Years".

Marvellous. This depraved animal that snarled at me three months earlier had been molesting children since he was a teenager. He ruined 30 lives. He sentenced 30 children to a lifetime of nightmares. A nasty, nasty creature. I hope they beat the living shit out of him every day that he was in gaol. He'll be out now. If he approaches you while you are smoking you will know it's him: he cannot control his spittle and his face goes purple when he rants. Do yourself, and the wider world, a favour: kick him swiftly in the bollocks.

While I was calming down in the pub, three months earlier, I had felt slightly ashamed. I even berated myself for my lack of care for my fellow humans. I will never forgive that twat for making me feel sorry for him.

What bothers me is that he was under investigation at the time we met. He knew he had been abusing children for twenty years yet still chose to call me a filthy bastard. How he could justify (in his sick and twisted mind) that his actions were fine, but I, smoking a cigarette, was a filthy bastard, is beyond my understanding.

Now, of course, I know more about smoking and second hand smoke than my GP and almost any anti-smoking scientist (more accurately, epidemiologist) that you could put in front of me. I know that almost all of the original 78 studies on second hand smoke are statistically meaningless. I know that all the pictures on cigarette packets are faked. I know that everything ASH says is a fabrication, or at best, a gross distortion.

Actually, if I applied their logic, I can state, without fear of contradiction, that 100% of the anti-smokers I have interacted with, are morbidly obese or they are paedophiles. (Just for the record: there is a world of difference between non smokers and anti-smokers. In my experience I have found the overwhelming majority of non smokers to be very tolerant. And for that, you have my heartfelt thanks).

Oh, I do have a third story. I was staying overnight in a Luton hotel (near the airport) and in the evening I went down for a pint and a smoke in the bar. I had been there for ten minutes or so when a fat lady sat down at the next table with her husband. "Do you have to smoke that here?", she asked. "Yes", I said, "Yes I do". She (an American) said, "Well, I don't like it. I don't think it's fair. Why should I put up with it?". Her husband rolled his eyes upwards when I said "You don't have to, love. You can simply move over there to the non smoking section". Without so much as an apology she shifted her not inconsiderable arse to the non smoking area. Her husband looked at me and shrugged.

What a world, eh?

CR.