Scott Agnew Scottish Comedian Of The Year 2008

Glasgow - Scotland with…

2007-07-05T03:53:00.000Z

Being a fairly left-wing, anti-racist, liberal, homosexual atheist hasn't been easy these past few days here in Glasgow.

I am envious of the Muslims, the Pakistanis and the Indians - at least they know they need to watch out for themselves and can expect to be discriminated against, shunned, ignored or worse in the street.

Envious too am I of the idiots that have made a certain baggage handler a hero. For they know who to cheer for and who to boo for like children of the 40s and 50s watching a Western at the cinema.

From my perspective I really don't know who or what to cheer for - in fact I suspect there is no-one who deserves to be cheered and there is much more to be booed in the wake of the shoddy attempt at a terror attack last weekend in Glasgow.

I shall start with John Smeaton, the arsehole baggage handler, who now very much gets my sympathy for he knew not what he created when he opened his trap on Saturday evening.

He may well now regret his exaggeration of events on Saturday afternoon. I am convinced this tale of his own heroism was that of a blowhard. I am as certain as someone can be he did not hear either of the two attackers shout "Allah." I look forward to finding out if Strathclyde Police will put Mr Smeaton forward to the London Metropolitan Police's enquiry as a chief witness to the events of Saturday afternoon at Glasgow Airport - somehow I very much doubt it.

As a former journalist I personally wouldn't have touched Smeaton's quotes with a barge pole until I could have got them corroborated and to date no one has.

The mass wave of praise for Smeaton that has followed is bizarre but typical of our age. I believe Mark Tortolano who launched the original Smeaton fan-site did so with his tongue firmly placed in cheek, having recognised the arsehole element to Smeaton's over dramatisation of events.

Now Mr Tortolano seems to be awkwardly playing along on TV that the setting up of the website was an act of genuine appreciation and sentiment as he now has a battalion of readers on his site who clearly missed the irony - or rather chose to.

The reason for Smeaton's popularity is two fold and appeals to two different types of Glaswegians.

Smeaton is a useful caricature. He is what certain Glaswegians have as a romanticised view of themselves or at least where they think they came from. An ordinary working class guy in a job that requires manual work that gets your hands dirty - real work. A guy that likes to think he can handle himself, is willing to have a go, someone with a bit of schtick and swagger (or "gallus" as Glaswegians would say) and can be fairly humorous - whether intended or not.

Rather than acknowledge what Smeaton is - someone who fancied blowing their own trumpet or bum their chat on the telly - there has been a clamour to laud him, hold him up as your typical Glaswegian - as a warning to the world that Glasgow is still a bit mental - when really it's not anymore.

To hail Smeaton gives the suited and booted Southside Glaswegian guy sipping a nice Starbucks' tall skinny latte, working in the city centre as an inbound sales agent in a call centre some of his masculinity back.

The other Glaswegian who is happy to call Smeaton their hero is the worst of all. It is the Glaswegian who has always lived with a bubbling undercurrent of racism who has now found new justification to air their views freely.

These people believed Smeaton's tale unquestioningly, and joke about how lucky he was that he got to "smack a Paki" not only "while the cunt was burning" but also "right in front of the polis." And best of all he's a hero for it. The quotes are from an over heard bus conversation.

Since Saturday Strathclyde Police have had reports of 38 racially motivated crimes - apparently a huge surge in what they would normally have dealt with in four days. Eight of these crimes the police have been able to say occurred directly as a result of the Airport attack.

On Sunday, I myself witnessed an Asian door steward, who was wearing a turban, having to refuse some punters entry to the Glasgow Carling Academy and then call the police due to the level of racist abuse he was subjected to. Later that night I saw three Asian lads being refused entry, without question, to a gay nightclub too.

This is not mentioning some of the racist bile, snide comments and generally racist jokes that have been pouring fourth quite unashamedly over the past few days. I had believed for quite a while there was a horribly racist underbelly to Glasgow. Now I fear the city's lying on it's back letting anyone see it's true colours at the minute.

My awareness of how racist this city could be was whilst I went out with a Muslim lad for around six months - we were an odd looking couple, granted, I'm 6'4" and he was a whole foot shorter than I so we did attract some attention - being both mixed height and mixed race.

Out on Glasgow's gay scene there were constant sniggers, jibes and conversations stopping whenever you approached a bar as folk failed to change the subject in time. It was horrible and hurtful but obviously more so for my partner at the time because at the end of the day - it was him they were talking about - I just happened to be with him.

I realise this type of latent and overt racism exists throughout the UK and at all levels. The Celebrity Big Brother scandal earlier this year proved that - sadly - I think that was an opportunity missed. Had C4 shown the whole nasty affair in graphic detail we might actually have got a proper debate on race in this country - rather than everyone having their conscience salved by the fact Shilpa Shetty won. "See we're not racist - our favourite reality TV contestant is Asian."

To air your non-racist views in Glasgow at the minute - you do get a kind of curious look. Almost as if I'd just confessed to driving the Jeep Cherokee myself. Then - imagine, if you will, trying to explain the next part to the John Smeatons and fans of this world.

"I'm anti-racist but I'm anti-Islam too." The assumption is that if you don't hate the skin colour you don't reject the religion - which is of course tosh.

But then I'm living in a city where people can still be beaten or killed because of a divide within the shared religion of Christianity. So if many Glaswegians can't see they are pretty much exactly the same - then someone with a different skin colour and different religion has no chance.

Even though Scots Asians are doing their very best to fit in by picking up habits which are a source of great national pride. Seems male Scots of South Asian descent are 45 per cent more likely to suffer a heart attack than your average male of the same age in Scotland. How's that for integration - out doing the deep-fried Mars bar and Irn-Bru brigade. (Source BBC Scotland http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/edinburgh_and_east/6271786.stm)

But being anti-racist and anti-Islam, or more accurately anti-religion, makes you feel like you have few allies and sometimes don't know who you should be debating with first.

Do you debate with the racists so as to make sure an innocent Muslim doesn't get a kicking because it is believed they might be linked to al Qa'ida and terror plots? Or do you debate with the Muslims and the nasty, vindictive and cruel edge to their religion (as there is with nearly all religions) which readily preaches against me and my sexuality?

A religion that saw my young Muslim partner blackmailed into his second arranged marriage aged just 24 when his mother refused treatment for breast cancer until he agreed to go ahead and "stop all this gay nonsense."

As I said at the start there are more folk to be booed in the present scenario than cheered. Scotland, and particularly Glasgow, needs to look at its' race relations and figure out how to eradicate some deeply nasty and strongly held attitudes on race.

Racism seems to have been allowed to fester away throughout the generations in the West of Scotland as the Catholic community and Protestant community struggled to get along together.

The Catholic Church's outrageous stance against Catholic and Protestant children being educated together surely can't have helped to build an inclusive society in any way, perhaps not just exacerbating sectarianism it may well have distracted from the problems of race relations and for that they must hang their heads in shame.

The Muslim community and it's leaders need to look at teaching a softer, diet version of its religion which perhaps doesn't call judgement so harshly on those that do not conform to Islam.

Strangely there is a common bond between many racists, followers of Islam and the Christians - both Catholic and Protestant - each would all happily condemn me and my sexuality.

It is ludicrous for any sector of society to ask for protection from discrimination whilst it continues to preach against others itself.

The Glasgow Arsehole Attack

2007-07-01T09:27:00.000Z

Yesterday's news filled me with fear and alarm as I watched that green Jeep Cherokee burn at the entrance to Terminal 1 of Glasgow Airport. Yes, it was inevitable - at some point over the course of the next 24 hours there would be some of my fellow Glaswegians appearing undistilled on the telly giving eyewitness accounts.

For a while we were spared. It seemed to take an age for the big rolling news channels to get cameras anywhere near the Airport. STV's two camcorders were at the opening of the Scottish Parliament where the Queen was. So they had to rely on library footage of the airport - shortly followed up with Biro scribbles on the back of a beer mat of what Bernard Ponsonby thought a terrorist attack at the airport might look like.

By about 6pm the news crews were there - not the decent reporters mind - just the ones that cover on the weekends - looking a bit rough, wearing bobbled fleeces and with unkempt hair.

They coped manfully and both on BBC News 24 and Sky News there were eyewitness accounts piling in - and wee pixelated leaping flames dancing over our screens from folks' mobile phones. Glasgow was doing quite well as most of the eyewitnesses were mainly from England - so the viewers could understand what was being said you see.

Then a couple of Weegies phoned in - and to my astonishment they made a decent fist of their reports on what they had seen - only stumbling every time it came to describing the people that had been in the Jeep. In fact, I was impressed they managed to replace "a Paki bastard" with "eh, eh, eh, eh… an Asian filla" at every turn.

Clearly they had remembered what the BBC staff had coached them on minutes earlier before getting on live telly.

Now the BBC's Peter Cissons, a grumpy bastard these days, was quite forceful in his questioning of each of the callers and forensically quizzed the eyewitnesses about what the two "eh, eh, eh, eh…Asian fillas" were like; what expression they had on their faces; and if they were saying anything while all the shenanigans with burning cars and assaulting police officers and flinging about of Molotov cocktails was going on.

Each eyewitness agreed not a thing was said by our friendly terrorists. I'd put the count of eyewitnesses who agreed to this at about nine; maybe a few more. Unity between Glaswegians, English, Irish and some other odd accent I could not account for, who claimed they had been in close proximity to the burning Jeep.

I was watching the early parts of the news broadcast with my mother and we instantly exclaimed the same thing when this man opened his mouth. It was what I had dreaded since the news first broke.

"Areshole!"

My mother and I cried in unison.

Now I don't know if the rest of the UK spotted that John Smeaton, baggage handler, was an arsehole or whether it was only fellow Glaswegians that could spot it's own particular brand of arsehole - but if you are reading from any other part of Britain and you picked this ginger eejit out as an arsehole do let me know.

I watched the man interviewed several times, the first time on the BBC. His tale was so wild that the wee Glesga wummin, Jacqui Kennedy - who looked like she'd been too close to the burny Jeep given how dry her Peroxide white hair was and how leathery her toasted skin appeared - was visibly laughing at his side as he told it.

"Did the assailants say anything?" Said Weekend Wummin for the BBC.

"Yeah, they were shouting "Allah!" They were throwing punches at the Police and shouting Allah, Allah, Allah!" said the Glasgow Arsehole John Smeaton.

Wisely the BBC cut him off at this stage only for the numpty to appear minutes later spouting the same tosh on Sky News. Murdoch's channel seemed to actively encourage him to keep reciting this twaddle about "Allah!" in their pursuit of ever more sensationalist and exciting rolling news.

Other than the "Allah!" bit I never heard this fool recite the same story twice. He realised why he was popular with the "Allah!" thing, it was going well for him. But he went from being round a corner having a fag and not seeing the initial impact to being 20 yards away. From watching Police officers getting a slap from burning terrorists to being involved in fisticuffs with the terrorists themselves and assisting the Police. But always, always hearing them shouting, definitely, shouting "Allah! Allah! Allah!"

My mother and I concluded he was a typical Glasgow walloper who, you can imagine, nobody in the local boozer takes seriously and probably scoff and rip the piss behind his back.

By early evening Liverpool's John Lennon Airport confirmed they were to be the only other airport in the whole of the UK that would shut as a result of the terror attack in Glasgow. Heaven forbid something awful should happen to this country that the Scouse can't add to the chip on their shoulder.

Sky, unsurprisingly, had persisted with Glasgow arsehole Smeaton's clearly ludicrous claim that no one could corroborate all day - whilst the BBC had dropped it altogether. Then a weird thing happened.

Strathclyde Police's Chief Constable Willie Rae gave his Press conference at 9.30pm and confirmed the men that were being held were Asian and that they suspected there was a link between the Glasgow Airport attack and the failed bombs in London a couple of days earlier.

Suddenly the Glasgow arsehole's claims of "Allah!" were being broadcast by the BBC yet again. Bizarre. Why did the confirmation of the attackers' ethnicity suddenly make what was clearly a bollocks, unsubstantiated claim okay?

Smeaton is now on a loop on the telly on both 24 hour news channels with the least reliable of all the reports that I had heard over the course of the day.

The Home Office - to use Glasgow parlance - have now upped the nation's defence state of alert from "keep the edgy" to "pure shiting it" even thought there's no real evidence why we should be.

Call me a cynic but it does smack of being rather handy for Mr Brown that days after taking over as PM he has two "terrorist" alerts and one attack in which no one got hurt. He gets to look serious, tough and capable whilst assisting in running controversial legislation through Westminster he's been rather keen on for a while. The 90 day detention of suspects and ID cards to name but two. And a nice early boost to approval ratings too.

On taking office as PM outside number 10 on Wednesday, Mr Brown said: "At all times I will be strong in purpose, steadfast in will, resolute in action in the service of what matters to the British people."

After his meeting with C.O.B.R.A. on Saturday evening he got be all those things and then asked the British people to do the same, saying: "I know the British people will stand together, united and resolute."

I particularly don't like it when politicians keep on using the same words - I get worried. A bit like Tony's "It's the right thing to do" mantra.

Will Gordon's catch-all argument be that we must be "resolute" in the face of anything that challenges his Premiership? The Clunking Iron Fist indeed.

And as an aside - what better way to bring a people which has just voted against your party and installed a nationalist government into line than a wee terrorist attack?

Certainly an interesting way to shut up a possible rabble rousing SNP First Minister like Alex Salmond.

Fade to Brown

2007-06-30T03:25:00.000Z

The oddest of things can provoke my mind and send it crashing the wrong way and generally off course from where I'd like it to be.

Gordon Brown took over as Prime Minister from Tony Blair on Wednesday afternoon after a ten year wait. The pundits spoke of how frustrating a wait it must have been for Gordon Brown - which I suppose it must have been. However at least after waiting ten years he got what he wanted.

I grew up knowing nothing but a Conservative Government and as a youngster never quite understood why my grandfather, on my mother's side, would begin to rock in his chair, wave his newspaper and swear at the television every time Margaret Thatcher appeared on the screen.

He behaved much the same way when the Queen popped up on the tube too and would curse even more mightily if he couldn't turn the volume down before "God Save the Queen" started to blast out it's first mournful notes.

In fact my grandfather got me into a lot of bother when I was younger with this behaviour.

Other than my grandmother the family were all lapsed Catholics, my sister, who may have been about five years old at this time, was a member of the local Rainbow troop (baby Brownies) at the local protestant, Church of Scotland, church hall.

One Sunday the Rainbows were having some kind of church parade thing and all the children would march about the grounds of the church and wave flags and what not else before attending a service. Duly I was dragged along - most likely the first non-Catholic ceremony I'd ever been at and I was not entirely sure what to do. Certainly there was a lot less singing and standing up and down, kneeling and getting out the pews to go here there and wherever - which appealed to me I thought.

As the service finished the Minister unfurled a Union Jack and it was draped proudly behind the alter before the organist piped up with "God Save the Queen."

I rather loudly followed my grandfather's protocol much to the mortification of my mother as all our neighbours were packed in the pews around about us.

"Dirty Orange Bastards!" I cried at the top of my nine-year old lungs and swiftly received a clunk from the back of my mother's hand around about my ear before being marched out the back of the Old Parish.

I had no idea what I'd said I'd just copied what I'd heard my grandfather say umpteen times when I heard that song in his company but it illustrates how strongly things like religion, politics and the monarchy were debated in my family and how dearly held certain values were.

Which brings me back to Mr Blair. I was at my grandparents' house on May 1 1997 - I was staying over - and normally I'd have been tucked up in bed for at the very latest 11pm - yes I know I was 16 years old, but grandparents have rules and besides I was never a surly or rebellious teenager.

But tonight was different - I remember my grandfather being anxious but excited, he told me this could be quite an important night - I kind of figured that out myself anyway - but I didn't quite understand my grandfather's depth of feeling about the whole scenario.

We stayed up all night - right the way through the night, my granddad, my granny and I. We were hooked and got totally sucked in watching the Labour Party wipe the Tories out in Scotland and cruise to the historic landslide victory.

My grandfather was ecstatic - the grin hardly left his face all night as each Conservative loss rolled in. He cheered and done a wee dance when we watched Michael Portillo lose his seat to Stephen Twigg. I'd only seen my granddad behave like that when he was watching football.

The only disappointment about the whole event for my grandfather was that it hadn’t been Maggie Thatcher that had got the complete drubbing as she'd been politically murdered by her own sort earlier in the decade.

On the Friday of May 2^nd 1997 after having watched Tony and Cherie Blair march triumphantly along Downing Street, out and about on the streets there was a genuine feeling of change in the air.

Folk were smiling bizarrely at one another, like they'd all just been at the same orgy and had shot their load at the same time and were, quite frankly, pleased with themselves. I remember a physical feeling of freshness as if we'd had days upon days of humid heat and a thunderstorm broke clearing the air.

I remember this feeling quite well - if I close my eyes I can still summons up the feeling in my stomach and chest that I got that day. The enduring message I got from that - and at 16 years old it was quite a powerful one, was that you can achieve anything - you can overcome any difficulty and obstacle.

Tony Blair's brave new Britain provided me with fire in my belly and I genuinely did think I could achieve whatever I wanted. And if there was any doubt there were the icons of my generation supping tea and champagne with the new PM who would open the door and allow us limitless ambitions, hopes and desires.

And this is where Wednesday's handover between Blair and Brown sent my brain spiralling back to my default setting of miserable, cynical bastard. Because if I was to match up Mr Blair's reign in power with my own life it's kind of a bit shit at all the same times he was shit.

Now I'm not blaming him - not for all of it anyway - but it has made me think has my life and my outlook on it been directly correlated to Blair's premiership? Is it a bit like the way the moon affects folks behaviour?

Working in papers in the early days I had worked hard to get stories, I chased them as relentlessly as I possibly could, I put a real effort into understanding people and the people that made the world of my newspaper tick, and hopefully got under their skin enough to have got decent stories and hopefully results for those that needed them.

Some of the joys of working in a local newspaper is often you can directly and quite quickly see a difference as a result of something you've written.

Working in Government in the early days Tony made the cracking "People's Princess" speech and helped the Queen out of her PR muddle and endeared himself to the nation.

He equalised the age of consent on homosexuality, introduced a national minimum wage, helped single mothers and put Northern Ireland on the right course. He got to understand people and the people that made Britain tick.

I imagine working in Government you can see quite quickly the direct difference you have made to people's lives with the policies you implement.

It was the tail end of 2002 and early 2003 that as the Father of the Chapel (Union official) I was taking on management with the help of the NUJ as TrinityMirror tried to make redundancies and merge offices. The fire in my belly, the belief that I could achieve anything really pushed me to the fore.

At the same time Tony Blair and George W Bush were on the march to war in Iraq.

I became vocal and a damned nuisance to the company's management and fought as long and as awkward a campaign as was humanly possible against redundancies and mergers. I was getting politically active too, and as many others, was increasingly worried about the prospect of war.

It seemed we had the company on the ropes - they couldn't merge the offices - they'd breach Health and Safety laws if they put all those people into one office.

It seemed Tony Blair and George W were on the ropes - they couldn't go to war I marched with tens if not a hundred thousand in Glasgow on February 15, 2003 and nearly 10 million others did around the world - the biggest protest in world history telling them they're wrong. And besides they couldn't get a UN mandate.

TrinityMirror solved the problem on not meeting Health and Safety rules about merging the offices. They made some more people redundant so the merger would comply - regardless of how many staff they actually needed.

Tony Blair and George W Bush solved the problem of not getting a UN mandate - they eventually didn't ask for one and ignored the millions around the world telling them they were wrong and invaded Iraq anyway.

Of course that's a rather crude simplification of both scenarios but in both cases it was a reminder.

A reminder that you can make logical arguments all day long, have the whole world on your side if you like. You're not in charge - you're still the little man - and this is how we remind you of it.

So Wednesday just past rather depressed me - it was the passing of a turbulent decade - a decade of great hope and mild achievement - but ultimately dashed hopes leaving us all in a bigger mess.

In 1997 it was New Labour, New Dawn, New Britain with Mr Blair.

In 2007 it is simply New-ish Labour, New Veneers, "New Brush for my hair" with Mr Brown.

The fire in my belly is as dormant as Vesuvius, but certainly not extinct - I just hope I don't fade to Brown.

Cigarettes

2007-06-25T02:11:00.000Z

Cigarettes - I gave them up last Wednesday and it's more or less 120 hours since I devoured one of my beloved Marlboro Gold 100s.

The 100s were longer than the average Marlboro Gold (really Lights but Marlboro are not allowed to call them that because that made it sound like a diet cigarette). There was a nice sleek, smooth sexual feel to slipping one out of the box and hear the paper brush against it's brother and sister smokes as it kept on coming and coming until it broke free from the packet in a climatic sort of "When Harry Met Sally" kind of way.

Great joy was taken from rushing it's camel coloured filter with the crisp, clean white inner to my mouth before enjoying the flick of the lighter and drawing long, deep and hard on the cigarette. Pulling the smoke as far down into my chest cavities as was humanly possible and then holding - Tantric like - until I just had to exhale and blow that grey, blue smoke up and out into the atmosphere and then wonder just how much that puff - indeed that particular cigarette - would contribute to my carbon footprint.

Would a pot plant purchased from B&Q once a year be quite enough to satisfy the environmentalist wheeler dealers and carbon Del Boys? Do I even contribute at all to Scotland's carbon footprint? I don't drive, I never fly and surely the emissions from a wee house like this can't matter a great deal - even though I am inclined to leave the telly on when I'm not in the room.

I am worried. Both about my own health and the environment - why else would I have given up something I enjoy so much. I enjoy smoking , a lot. But I am trained by the current climate we live in to worry about it.

Rather than just enjoy my cigarettes I would panic with every wheeze, splutter, cough and slight pang in my chest that I had caught something intractable. Every time I ventured out into the cold and the wet to enjoy a smoke I could swear I felt pneumonia coming on.

Even when the weather was pleasant and I could attempt to enjoy a smoke without the wind billowing around me and the rain soaking my cigarette until the tobacco fell away from the filter was I faced with difficulties.

Non-smokers - who had won the battle and the debate to reside indoors smoke free - were now outside complaining they couldn't get a gulp of fresh air for all the smokers camped in smoking gardens and streetside cafes enjoying a puff in the sun - perfectly legally too. Surely if smokers have to endure a Scottish winter outside they should at least be allowed some reprieve for the five minutes of summer this country is afforded without folk whingeing.

Since the joy I got from smoking was slowly being eroded by a series of measures I decided I might as well pack it in. I don't need even more worry in my life, worrying about my health, others' health, my finances, the finances of the NHS, worrying about all the cigarette doubts on the street and whether anyone will ever get round to picking them out. The wee ashtrays on the walls outside pubs and whether one day they will go up in flames as someone failed to extinguish properly and now all the butts have caught light and we have a mini-inferno on our hands.

The worry of my cigarettes harming the environment. The worry of the environment in itself . Why am I so worried about everything?

Why when I am doing the socially responsible and correct thing by not having a cigarette and then taking the bus into the city centre do I start to get pangs of worry - counting the folk on the bus to make sure there are enough folk on it to make it an environmentally viable bus? Why am I wracked with guilt when a whole squad of folk get off at Asda and then there is only me and the driver for the remainder of my trip taking me from the South Side to the city centre? Surely now my carbon footprint is fucked and I'd have been just as well to have had that bloody cigarette in the first place.

I am worried because someone, somewhere is telling me to be worried about all these things and alter my behaviour accordingly. I'm not entirely sure who, but whoever they are, they are doing a damn fine job of it.

Now I am worried about my mental health. I have just read the last paragraph and realise the extreme paranoia that is involved in the construction of a paragraph like that.

Relax, there is no need for a community psychiatric nurse. It's just the cravings for a cigarette making me feel this way, surely?

Ok, now I need some evidence that this lunacy I'm putting myself through has some benefits. A bit like a birthing mother having a quick check between her legs to make sure there actually will be a child as an end product.

I Google "benefits of quitting smoking" and get tonnes of websites telling me that within 20 minutes the healing process has begun and within two days my blood pressure and pulse rate will have dropped; the temperature of my hands and feet increased; I will have zero carbon monoxide and nicotine in my body and there's more oxygen in my blood. Thrown into the bargain is a decrease in the likelihood of having a heart attack, the re-growth of my nerve endings and my ability to taste and smell improved.

Whoopee! My own food tastes like shit, I fart a lot, my body temperature was quite high enough thank you and to be honest I'm not keen on living into my 70s or 80s with no pension and little prospect of being "turned" once a week in a piss stained bed in a state nursing home where the staff are paid about as much as what they care.

I have to check myself again, I must stop thinking like this - it's just the nicotine talking - what shall I do?

The website - the website has handy hints - that'll help me find ways of stopping me thinking about my craving for a smoke. I assumed the first website was a bit odd - so I tried a couple of other websites but they all suggested the same thing as a distraction to stop me smoking.

It seems paedophilia is one of the best ways to stop smoking. That and housework. On various websites I was advised that when I was feeling a little smoke "antsy" or "in a funk" I go borrow some kids.

A niece or nephew - one website even recommended I chap a neighbours door and asked if I could take their child out for the afternoon and get them an ice cream.

For those wondering I have contacted the Portugese Police with this information and they are drawing up a list of former smokers who were in the Santa Da Luz area around the time of Madeleine McCann's disappearance.

Whatever will I do if I cannot kidnap a child whenever I feel the urge for a smoke?

Well it would seem I should, empty closets, scrub floors, build furniture, clean the bathroom, iron clothes, the list of chores was endless. Where is the fun in all this I ask and what if you're a single mother with three kids and a house to keep, surely you had to do all that in the first place while you were smoking - what are they going to do?

To quote the site:

"Practice smiling in the mirror, crank up the radio and dance like no-one is watching, sing at the top of your voice, walk in an old graveyard, play mini-golf, do jumping jacks, go ride a few roller coasters, colour your hair, donate blood, take a shower, talk to God, run on the spot"

Giving up smoking is clearly a license to behave like a fucking loony according to these smug, shiny former smokers and I'm dreading turning into one.