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Welcome to
the end of the world, as seen through the eyes of James Leavey,
one of Britain's most politically incorrect writers, as well-known
for his subversive humour as he is for his outspoken support of
smokers around the world.
The editor of 'The
FOREST Guide to Smoking in London' and 'The
FOREST Smoker's Guide to Scotland' - the
world's first travel guides for those who still dare to enjoy
tobacco in public, Leavey's books and articles on or around the
subject of smoking have ignited debate on many of the world's
radio and television stations, including BBC 24 Hours, Sky News,
CNN, Cuba's National Radio, and in much of the world's printed
media, including The Times, The Sunday Times, Playboy, Time
magazine, Financial Times, GQ magazine, Marie Claire, Pravda, The
Scotsman, USA Today, International Herald Tribune, Die Welt,
Independent on Sunday, Time Out, and London's Evening Standard.
As author of 'The Harrods Pocket Guide to Fine Cigars', and
editor/writer of JJ Fox's occasional cigar newsletter, 'The
Humidor,' his work is also read by many of the world's most famous
(and well-heeled) cigar aficionados.
A regular
contributor on cigars and other subjects to Classic Travel
magazine, Wine magazine, Boom magazine (sent to 50,000 British
millionaires), the Hurlingham Polo Association Book of the Season,
and Whisky magazine, James Leavey is, when he's not home swigging
single Malts and inhaling Havanas, a tobacco historian, cigars
columnist for World Tobacco magazine, and an occasional
contributor to BBC Radio 4 - where he is not allowed to light up
so much as a cigarette in their studios!
When he runs
out of cigars, James switches to one of his pipes - one of the
reasons why he contributed to the current edition of 'The
Pipesmokers' Handbook' (contact www.pipesmokersouncil.org
for a free copy).
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Week Sixteen -
For those of you wondering why I haven’t been updating this column,
recently, the short answer is I was rather busy, moving from north London
to Cowes on the Isle of Wight, just off the southern coast of England –
which has for six months now has become, for myself and my wife, ‘foreign
parts’. Oddly enough, I wasn’t driven from Britain’s capital by the
anti-smokers – in the words of John Wayne ‘That’ll be the day!’ No, I
drove down here, all the way, all by myself, the car packed to the rafters
with cigars, cigarettes and ashtrays. And have been enjoying it ever
since. |
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Week Fifteen -
According to Robert Hare, who teaches at the University of British
Columbia and recently addressed a police conference in New York, one per
cent of the world’s population are clinical psychopaths, i.e. deceitful,
short-tempered individuals who display early behavioural problems that
later become anti-social. He also blames the recent blue-chip accounting
scandals at WorldCom and Enron on psychopathic chief executive officers,
who are easily recognized by their deceit, short-temper, irresponsibility
and craving for excitement. Such people, he says, are usually callous and
cold-blooded and don’t care that anyone else, especially underlings, may
have thoughts and feelings. They also have no sense of remorse or guilt.
Goodness gracious me! That almost describes to a ‘T’ many of the
anti-smoking born-again puritans most smokers get on the wrong side of
every day. The good news is... |
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Week Fourteen -
Not long ago, I spent a few convivial and
informative hours with Dr Ernst Schneider, chairman of Davidoff, whose
multinational company is often said to be the world’s biggest name in
cigars. Indeed, the name
Davidoff is inextricably linked with the smoker-friendly city of Geneva,
and I had flown there for the grand reopening of Dr Schneider’s
refurbished flagship cigar shop.
At
one point, I told him that I had recently interviewed Peter de Savary, the
entrepreneurial businessman and founder of The Carnegie Club at Skibo
Castle in Scotland, former Highland home of Andrew Carnegie, which went as
follows...
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Week Thirteen -
Week 13, unlucky for some. Especially the quarter of the world's
mammals who face extinction within 30 years, according to a recent United
Nations study on the state of the global environment. Or to put it another
way, that's 11,046 species of plants and animals, including 1,130 mammals
- 24 per cent of the total, and 12 per cent, or 1,183 species of birds.
They'll probably blame it all on passive smoking.
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Week Twelve -
We're living in an age where we have
become so anesthetized by the media's constant bombardment of images of
brutality, war, greed, hunger and intolerance, that our interest is only
grabbed by 'sexy' headlines. Such as, 'All the world's illnesses are
caused by passive smoking'. Or some such balderdash. The
sad reality is that whenever there's a disaster, those of us who have
access to the world's 24-hours news networks (CNN, Fox, Sky, BBC etc) are
often glued to life's evolving dramas. 'News' has now metamorphosed into a
ghoulish form of spectator entertainment.
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Week Eleven -
... Maybe it's time we bred a new race of super-smokers:
intelligent, considerate, nicotine-friendly adults who refuse to fall for the 'you're
killing me with all that passive smoking' arguments, and are prepared to fight for the right to smoke in public
areas. Meanwhile, researchers at the Max Planck Institute of Psychiatry in Munich
have found mice lacking a gene called CRH1 drank more alcohol after stressful experiences than normal animals. Maybe there's a CRH2 gene, for
people who smoke more after being publicly humiliated by total strangers.
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Week Ten - There’s a lot that’s
been bugging me this week, in more ways than one. Western Europe has
been invaded by a supercolony of Argentian ants who, unlike the silly
bureaucrats who reputedly run the European Union, represent the largest
co-operative unit of individual organism. The ‘Argies’, as we Brits
used to call them, in the bad old days of the Falkland War conflict,
have collectively driven out the 20 or more indigenous species in an
area that stretches from Italy, through the south of France, around the
coast of, and up the Atlantic coast of Portugal. And none of them smoke.
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Week Nine -
' In a few billion years, our home
galaxy, the Milky Way, will collide with the Andromeda Galaxy, with
catastrophic results. And there’s nothing we can do about it, even
if we humans, as a race, survive that long. So given the bleak,
long-term future of the Earth, why are some this planet’s country
leaders still fanning the flames of war? Get your heads out of the
ashtray, I say, and watch where the smoke rises. Then maybe you’d
realize there’s a sky up there too, and that we all live under it.'
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Week Eight -
' What a week this has been. The Queen Mother died aged 101, God
Rest Her, and the Israeli/Palestinian conflict gets more nightmarish
every time I - hesitatingly - switch on the news. Perhaps that’s
why I keep finding myself humming, 'Nearer My God, Than Thee'.'
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Week Seven -
' Nipped over to Belfast last
Friday, as chief judge of the annual press and broadcast awards, for a black-tie
dinner, complete with lots of booze and cigars. It was reassuring to see an ashtray on every
table, even if some people insisted on using it as a butter dish. The other judges were the usual top of the media
suspects, including the deputy editor of the Daily Express, and head of ITN News. Someone asked me who I
represented, to which I replied that, among other things, I was editor of the world’s first travel guides for
smokers. “So how come you’ve been the chief judge for the past three
years?” He asked. “Because I’m the one who rang the other judges and invited them to take
part,” I said. “That, and the fact that I’m the only person in the room with the keys to the cigar
humidor" '
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Week Six -
" It’s all looking
good, if you’re a suicidally-minded pessimist. Two Antarctic
shelves with a combined area of more than 3,000 square miles have
just fallen into the sea. I understand that neither event will
affect global sea levels because the shelves were already afloat.
But, hey, what a great time to take up surfing."
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Week Five -
" While scanning
several ‘Non-Smoking Vegans Live Forever’ websites last night,
to see how the other half lived, I came across one that asked me a
series of deeply personal questions about the current state of my
mind, body, and all those politically-incorrect habits that help me
make it through the night. It then threw this information into an
additive-free pot, stirred in some complicated equations – and out
popped the number of years I had left to live."
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Week Four -
' The other day, somebody asked me if a pea could last a thousand
years. "For a man with prostrate problems," I replied,
"it certainly seems that way at times." Then he wondered
aloud if female frogs croaked. "They do," I assured him,
"especially if you hold their head under water for several
hours." '
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Week Three -
"Several years ago I read an article about a man who went
potholing in New York State, during the course of which he dropped
his hammer down a hole – and never heard it land. He went on to
claim that NYC is standing on a huge geological fault which one day,
no doubt the result of a huge earthquake, will swallow the Big Apple
whole and spit out the pipsqueaks."
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Week Two -
"Had a bit of a shock when I went through this month’s bank
statement. Seems I’m worth more dead, than alive, what with the
cost of funerals being so high.
Rushed out to the local library and
found the perfect solution: The New Natural Death Handbook,
edited by Nicholas Albery and Stephanie Wienrich. It includes a
guide to all of Britain’s woodland burial grounds and mail-order
cardboard coffins, the best funeral directors, cemeteries and
crematoria, the law on private land burial, and inexpensive funerals
‘without funeral directors’."
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Week One - "It’s been a slow fortnight.
Just the usual global corruption, crime and violence, an African
volcano oozing lava, Trojan Horse viruses threatening my hard-drive,
and the most powerful man on the planet spending half of his time as
US President playing golf in Texas. And there’s still no sign of
the stray asteroid that is about to hit the Earth and wipe out
mankind."
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