I was once nominated for an award given out by the Tony Hancock Appreciation Society. This was back in the mid-1980s, and I’d written some stuff in the Society’s fanzine, The Missing Page. Full of hope, I went along to the annual Reunion Party (I trust you’re picking up the references), which was held that year at the Durlston Court Hotel in Bournemouth, a place run by Hancock’s parents when he was a child. And I left scarred with disappointment. Since then: not a whisper of a nomination.

So I was delighted this week to be actually given an award for the first time in my life. It was for a piece published on this site, about the Snouts of my Youth, and the Best Essay award came from the good people at Forest, the Freedom Organisation for the Right to Enjoy Smoking Tobacco.

I like Forest. Well, obviously I like them now, but I always did. In the days when I was failing to win a Hancock award, and when the anti-smoking lobby was starting to score serious victories, Forest were the ones prepared to voice a dissident opinion (along with a handful of newspaper columnists, including Bernard Levin and Keith Waterhouse), And I have a fondness for dissident opinion, even if I don’t agree with it.

Forest always insisted that they were not pro-smoking, but pro-freedom of choice. That means the organisation takes in a fair chunk of pure libertarianism, which goes further in its distrust of the state than I do, but even a liberal would have to be very pollyannaish not to be at least a little concerned by the censorious puritanism of successive governments. It’s good to have the likes of Forest around, that they might occasionally question the boundless self-confidence of Those Who Know Better.

As a historian, I also admire the style. Forest bills itself as ‘The Voice and Friend of the Smoker’, and I love that. In the nineteenth century, evangelicals stole the cultural language of their enemies – most notably when the Salvation Army raided the disreputable music halls for songs and acts. And ‘The Voice and Friend’ returns the compliment; it’s a phrasing that’s straight out of evangelism, but adopted by the opposite tradition, those who believe in the right of the freeborn Englishman to go to hell in whatever manner he chooses.

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Smoking is probably a lost cause, of course. Forest are, as their opponents would say, on the wrong side of history. But the wider war continues, as it has done for centuries, and there’s something to be said – as the shadows gather – for keeping the lighter flickering.

Anyway, I’m very pleased to get an award. Tony Hancock once asked: ‘Do we get a badge for doing this?’ The answer, it turns out, is: Yes. Yes, we do. Well, stone me.

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Smoke?

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