They smell unpleasant, they’re messy, they’re expensive and they’re dangerous. In fact when you think of it there’s no end of similarities between cigarettes and elephants. Which begs the obvious question: why has the Minister for Health not made it illegal to bring the latter into pubs from January 2004? Where is the consistency Mr Martin?

People who have never smoked won’t know this, but these are the kind of demented thoughts that occupy the mind of the smoker when he or she is trying to quit. You can’t sleep, so you lie awake at night shaking and thinking about cigarettes. Giant ones, and the way they might look at you. Because they have faces. And arms. And legs. Then they hold hands and dance around in a circle, singing: “Tra la la! Tra la la! Tra la la la la la la la!”
Then again, maybe it’s just me. In an effort to get a jump on Micheal Martin’s fiendish scheme to drive vast swathes of the Irish population to the brink of madness by making it illegal for them to smoke in pubs, I’ve decided that even though I don’t actually live in Ireland, I’m going to try and quit now in the hope that, come January, I’ll have put the worst of the experience behind me and adopted the smug, self-righteous tone of the anti-smoking zealot. Such a scenario will obviously enable me to enhance my Christmas holiday pleasure by being able to riff, be-bop and scat like Miles Davis on the pain of helpless, cowed Irish nicotine addicts as they leave their drinks behind and skulk out the pub door to congregate like wheezing crack whores in some cold, dank archway.
Of course it might not work. At the time of writing it’s been three whole days since I last smoked a cigarette. A short time in sport or politics, but three of the longest days of my life I might add. There’s every possibility I won’t make it as far as January without smoking. Those who know me would say there’s every chance I won’t make it to the end of this column without sparking up. I’ve failed before, but I can’t help but think that if I fail again, the last 72 hours of unbridled misery will have been a complete waste of time. Anyway, I read somewhere that it’s just the first six weeks that are the worst.
Six whole weeks of my new nocturnal timetable:
2:30am: Go to bed.
2:30-2:50am: FAGS! FAGS! FAGS! FAGS! FAGS! FAGS! FAGS! FAGS! FAGS! FAGS! FAGS! FAGS! FAGS! FAGS! FAGS! FAGS! FAGS! FAGS! FAGS! FAGS!
2:51-4:00am: Lie awake trying to take my mind off fags by attempting to recall that great gag by English comedian Boothby Graffoe. You know, the one about the similarities between cigarettes and weasels.
4:01-5:00am: Nod off at five minute intervals only to be woken up by disturbing images of wheezing, cigarette-smoking weasels dancing in a circle around the bed.
5:01-7am: Lie awake mentally ticking off all the benefits of my healthy new cigarette-free lifestyle: £13.50 extra in the bank, ulcers in my mouth, aches and pains in my arms and legs, a mild fever, a constant throbbing headache, and even more irritability, restlessness and difficulty with concentration than usual.
7:01am-7:30am: Snooze fitfully and have a vivid dream in which Bill Hicks performs his routine about giving up smoking. That one where he talks about every cigarette he sees looking as if it’s been “hand-rolled by Jesus and sealed shut with Claudia Schiffer’s pussy juice.”
7:31am: Ruminate over the fact that if Bill Hicks could give up smoking, anybody can.
7:32am: Ruminate over the fact that Bill Hicks died of cancer anyway. Surely there’s a message there somewhere.
8:00am: Finally give up trying to get any decent sleep, get up and have a cup of tea.
8:05am: Remember why cigarettes are like weasels – totally harmless until you pop one in your mouth and set fire to it.
8:10am: Work out with the aid of a calculator that over 17 years, I’ve smoked somewhere in the region of 124,100 cigarettes at a cost – at current prices – of just under £28,000.
8.11am: Chuckle at the notion that if I sucked on each of those cigarettes 15 times, then I’ve actually had considerably more puffs in my lifetime than there are living in San Francisco.
8:12am: Weep.
8:13-10:10am: Write the most lamentably poor column of all time – with bouts of typing interspersed with regular breaks for coughing and aimless pacing – before sitting back to let the raging torment between good and evil continue in my head for another long, long day. Go for the sympathy vote by reminding everyone that nicotine withdrawal is said to be worse than heroin withdrawal. Assume that nobody would expect me to turn in a column if I was in the process of trying to wean myself off smack and conclude that it would be churlish of hotpress to fire me for writing an astonishingly shit one while in my current vulnerable state.
10:11am: Meander vaguely back in the direction of the point: there’s been a lot of debate about Micheal Martin’s anti-smoking law, but I have to say that while I’m usually against government dictats that smack of totalitarianism, the Minister for Health will I’m sure be mightily relieved to hear that I am prepared to let this particular incidence of nanny state-ism slide. I fucking hate cigarettes, and if it takes the ego trip of some numb-skulled Irish politico with his priorities all wrong to knock a bit of sense into me and get me to stop, then so be it. Cigarettes and weasels indeed.