This will hurt me...

Opening gambit: our children are lucky because they will live far longer than us . Flanking manoeuvre: they should thank their lucky stars that the medical science has made all of this possible. By 'medical science', read doctor (as in 'Mengele') . Frontal assault: the MAN who is RESPONSIBLE for prolonging your children's lives LOVES to smoke. LOVES IT. In fact, the smokes - POSSIBLY - explain his EXTRAORDINARY superpowers skills. Dubious conclusion: Docs are TOPS. Docs love to SMOKE. Ciggies must be GREAT . As a side note, I'd also like to draw attention to the fantabulous 'T-Zone' theory: FORGET THE EVIDENCE, your throat DOESN'T LIE. Even when you're bombarding it with carcinogens.

Fat? Short of breath? Unable to clear hurdles neatly and efficiently? Have you thought about taking up smoking? Actually, this ad is typical of one of the easiest selling techniques around: vanity. If you are hungry, smoke , not eat . Sure, it'll give you cancer, but at least you won't get puffed running laps... ...oh.

I'VE GOT IT! I'm sensing that Henry and Ezra have been drifting away from me. They're always wanting to go to the park, the beach or the pool; seemingly anything to get out of the house and away from us. I never realised that it is the poor quality of the ciggies and drink that I lay out for them. Nothing but high end Rothmans and Johnny Walker Blue Label from here on in!

Madame Curie and her radiation, Newton and his apples, Einstein and his zany hair, Hawking and that voice thing, Fermi and his particles, Maxwell and his electric fields, Salk and his vaccines, on and on it goes. What is the one thing that they had in common? A fondness for the gaspers , that’s what! Do people really believe that the confluence of the scientific revolution and the arrival of tobacco in Europe is a mere coincidence? Nothing says science than late nights, pizza, loud music and a smoke filled room. Look at this dude here in today’s ad, he’s like Bill Wyman strumming away on his bass with a ciggie in hand. Just like Bill wouldn't be able to strum out that funky and sleazy opening salvo of Miss You (let alone his sleazy come-ons to underage girls) without a handy Peter Stuyvesant , the Chesterfield that you see above is perfectly weighted to maximise the fiddling of the dial on the microscope you see. That’s where they went wrong in ye olden days (that and their at...

After the farcical fake of yesterday, rather than expunge the entry, I'd bury it quickly under an authentic shocker. And what better and safer way than to dip into the grab bag of cigarette advertising? I figure that this Lucky Strike piece from the 1950s - that I lovingly title " Queer Santa's Post-coital Smoke " - should very much do the trick. ads involving gaspers, a filthy filthy habit pursued by foolish people Enjoy!

It is no surprise that people who write advertisements have a tendency to be quite liberal [ahem] with the truth. My experience in researching and writing this series on vintage ads (thousands of hours every single week alone!) tells me that of all the shysters, scammers, tricksters, con artists, deceivers, dissimulators, fablers, fabricators, fabulists, falsifiers, fibbers, phonies, charlatans, double-dealers, four-flushers, griftera, smooth operators and flim flam men that I've seen, those involved in the promulgation on the filthy habit that is cigarette smoking are the most brazen offenders. Yet it is far worse than a decadent art rolling around in it's own filth. We know the great crimes of the ad man, that is no surprise. But to drag the good name of dentistry through the mud is a bridge too far . I am not sure which of the nineteen thousand, two hundred and ninety three dentists were willing to put their name to the outrageous claims made above, but they have sha...

The descriptions in today’s ad are top notch. Only the best adman in the business could get some of this stuff across the line. As a lifelong non-smoker, for the most part the images promoted here are the antithesis of smoking in my mind. Read the descriptions to yourself, and even better, read them in a husky, feminine voice. Go on, you know that you like doing that: the 'coolness ' the ' true mildness ' the ' ripe, delicate taste and fragrance of smoking pleasure at its best '. Oops , excuse me; I think I've just climaxed... Right, where were we? Yeah, the whole thing screams what French literary ( wankery ) types call jouissance . Looking back at some of these ads, I can actually get some sort of sense of how something as unappealing (on so many levels) as smoking cigarettes managed to become so popular. If it weren’t quite so tragic, it rightly could be recognised of one of human history’s greatest achievements! I also like the notion of 'more sm...