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By James Leavey
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Jerry Springer
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Jerry Springer was born in London in 1944 of Jewish parents who fled Nazi Germany, and arrived in New York City as an immigrant at the age of five. He earned a B.A. in political science from Tulane University, a law degree from Northwestern, and his first job was as one of Senator Robert F Kennedy's presidential campaign aides.
After Bobby Kennedy's assassination, Springer joined a major law firm and entered politics. He served as Cincinnati's Council-at-Large for five years and in 1977 became one of the country's youngest mayors. Then he moved into broadcasting and became a top-rated news anchor and nightly political commentator on Cincinnati's WLWT-TV for ten years, winning ten Emmy's for his work, including reporting from famine-stricken Ethiopia and Sudan.
The Jerry Springer Show was premiered in 1991 and has since become the fastest rising show in the history of television, as well as the most controversial, noted for the bleeped obscenities of its guests, and fights. It is seen by 25 million people a day in over 40 countries. |
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Matt 'Mr. Cigar' Alan
- An in-depth
interview with the swift-thinking, wise-cracking, cigar-totin',
martini-guzzling, magician/presenter of 'Outlaw Radio - Live from
the Lighten Up lounge', who exhales across the Cable Radio Network
to over 26 million homes across America every week.
Catch up with him at
www.mrcigar.com. |
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Kevin Laffan - The author, playwright, TV dramatist, and creator of the
famous British TV soap 'Emmerdale', recently wrote his first novel, 'Virgins Are
In Short Supply.' He also wrote a TV play, 'Decision to Burn', starring fellow
smoker, Anthony Hopkins. |
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Russ Abbot - The comedian and Britain's former Pipesmoker of the
Year tells James Leavey how he lights up. |
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Sir Tom Courtney - At least the non-smoking British film and stage
actor is, thank God, not an anti-smoker. |
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Peter de Savary - The entrepreneurial founder of The Carnegie Club at
Skibo Castle, the former Highland home of Andrew Carnegie, lights up. |
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Antony Worral Thompson - Britain's top TV chef lights up in his own restaurant in West
London, while giving James Leavey his recipe for a
smoker-friendlier world. |
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Sir Jimmy Savile, OBE - JL: For a life-long smoker, you are
very fit. -
JS:
"I’ve run 214 marathons, done the Lands End-John O’Groats three times, and
over 300 professional cycle races including the first tour of Britain in
1951. When I was wrestling, I enjoyed 107 pro-fights." |
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Joseph Connolly - The writing of British best-selling
author of eight humorous novels has been described as
“Laugh-out-loud-funny” and “irresistible and extremely funny – like a
weird mix of Charles Dickens and Kingsley Amis.” His novel, Summer Things,
became a bestseller in France and UG has just turned it into a feature
film with a “huge budget” and a “dream cast” that includes Charlotte
Rampling, and Charlotte Gainsbourg (daughter of Serge), directed by Michel
Blanc. This is the first film made from one of Connolly’s books. James
Leavey interviewed Joseph Connolly about a year ago. |
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Su Pollard -
The British
comedian and actress, and star of the BBC TV's famous sitcom, Hi-Di-Hi, doesn't
light up. |
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Trevor Baylis
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The British inventor of the clockwork radio, lights up. If only he
would invent something that would knock some sense, and a
little tolerance, into the thick skulls of vehement
anti-smokers... |
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Barry Cryer -
The British comedy writer and raconteur tells FORCES to…lighten
up! |
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Tracey Emin -
The outspoken, provocative London
artist, speaks up... |
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Kinky Friedman -
JL: Where did you first start smoking?
KF: In my anus.
JL:
What cigars do you smoke now?
KF: Now, I smoke them
in my mouth. Orally. I enjoy any kind of Cuban cigars that I can
get hold of. I like Montecristo No. 2s, and Epicure No. 2s. I
smoke cigars that are big, like a Negro penis. For an introduction
to this interview, read:
The
day James
Leavey first met Kinky Friedman. |
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Sir Patrick Moore - Britain’s most
famous astronomer is a man of few words. Here’s a few of them on
smoking. |
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Sir Christopher Frayling - The former-smoker and current
Rector of the Royal College of Art in London – where he is also
Professor of Cultural History, and author of ‘Sergio Leone –
Something to do with death’, the definitive biography of the late
Italian cigar-friendly film-maker. |
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Bernard Manning - The notoriously
politically-incorrect Mancunian comedian, lights up. |
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Sir Colin Davis - Pipe smoking is music to the
world famous classical music conductor’s ears… |
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Dame Beryl Bainbridge - The
Liverpool-born novelist airs her views…
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Marlene Dietrich!
-- Peter Riva, 51, is a
literary agent and TV documentary producer who lives and works in
New York. He agreed to share an ashtray on behalf of his late,
legendary grandmother – the Berlin-born singer-actress who
glamourised smoking in the first half of the 20th
century, in such films as ‘The Blue Angel’ and ‘Destry Rides
Again’. December 27, 2001, marked the centenary of
Dietrich’s birth. |
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Henk de Vries
-- The founder and owner
of the Bulldog Café, Holland’s first cannabis café, which opened in
Amsterdam, 27 years ago, sounds off… |
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Lalo Schifrin -- The Hollywood composer (Bullitt, Mission:
Impossible, The Cincinatti Kid, The Liquidator, The Four Musketeers,
Buddy Buddy, Cool Hand Luke, Kelly’s Heroes, Dirty Harry, The
Beguiled etc etc!!!) pipes up from anti-smoking California. |
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Burt Kwouk -- The Chinese actor who
plays Cato, the Martial-Art manservant and foil to Peter Sellers’
Inspector Clouseau… |
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Geno Washington --
The legendary black American soul singer from
Evansville, Indiana, produced, with the Ram Jam Band, two of the
biggest selling albums (Hand Clappin’ – Foot Stomping’ – Funky Butt
– Live! AND Hipsters, Flipsters, And Finger Poppin’ Daddies) of the
1960s in the UK, both recorded live. He was the subject of Dexy’s
Midnight Runners UK chart-topping tribute single, Geno, in 1980.
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John Entwistle
--
James Leavey was one of the
last journalists to interview The Who’s late, lamented bass and
French horn player.
JL: So what you do when you go to a fancy
restaurant in America and have an expensive meal, and they tell you
that you can’t light up? JE:
Leave. JL: Do you think smoking
has made a positive contribution to your work as a musician?
JE: No. JL:
Do you worry about the potentially harmful effects of smoking?
JE: No. |
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Al Alvarez --
Al Alvarez, poet,
critic, anthologist and poker player, whose autobiography, Where
Did It All Go Right? was published in March 2002, pipes up…
JL: How do you feel about all this anti-smoking
hysteria?
AA: ...You feel, when you get to California, they’d put you in
fucking chains if they see you smoking. This is a form of
paranoia. Everybody loves that un-earned moral superiority,
where they feel that anything that infringes what they prefer is an
offense. I think it’s post-Stalinism; everybody wants to be
told what to think and what to do. |
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Christopher Lee --
Alive and loving it --
' The man behind some of the cinema's most terrifying villains and creatures
of the dark was prematurely buried in Baseline's Encyclopedia of Film, which
dated his demise at 31 March 1993. So it was with some trepidation that I shook hands with
Christopher Lee, biting my tongue to avoid blurting out something obvious like,
"Well, I see the sun's gone down, then." ' |
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Ian
Shaw -- I was sitting on a double-decker flame-red London bus, unlit Fox cigar in
hand (at least that's not illegal, yet) skimming through Ian Shaw's
official biography which I'd earlier downloaded from his Boston agent via
the Internet and a young man opposite asked: "Who's Ian Shaw?"
"Who wants to know?" I replied. "My name's Ian Shaw and I'm a systems
analyst," he said. "Well you're fortunate to share a name with one of the
greatest male jazz vocalists to emerge from Britain in the last few
decades," I explained, patiently, wishing I could light up the Corona.
It's a small world. |
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Stanford Newman -- Stanford Newman has been a driving force in America's cigar industry for
over 60 years. The proud patriarch of the USA's oldest cigar family, he
first started working for his father in his school vacations in 1930.
"I got into the business full time in 1938 but I didn't want to because
many of my father's friends in the industry said only old men smoke
cigars," said Stanford, now 80. "So I said to my father 'this isn't very
good because maybe in five years' time the old men will die and there won't
be any business.' He said 'Son, there will be new old men all the time.' |
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Jan
Olofsson--
Jan Olofsson was one of Sweden's first pop stars (known in the late fifties as
Rock-Ola) before he went to Hamburg, met the Beatles and came to London to work as a
photographer in the Swinging Sixties.
He also produced for his own company, Young Blood Records, several hit records in the
Sixties, Seventies and Eighties, including Desmond Dekker's Israelites, Rod (under the
name of Python Lee Jackson) Stewart's In a Broken Dream, I Remember Elvis, the classic
football anthem, Nice One Cyril, as well as country music for Dr John, Willie Nelson and
the late Hoyt Axton, and several hits for Mac & Katie Kissoon. As we enter a new
millennium, Jan Oloffson's musical career has stretched to four decades, with the recent
release of two new albums: Cigars from Havana, featuring 18 original songs by his
22-year-old Cuban wife, Anita, and The Cuban Revolution.
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