Pipe cured me of urge to smoke for rest of my life W

WE’VE had another warning about the nation’s obesity crisis.

The Royal Society for Public Health says it is not being helped by the marketing ploy in shops, cafes and restaurants known as upselling.

This is where you order a coffee or snack and the staff suggest an upgrade to a larger portion or extras for a small increase in the charge.

Eight out of 10 people asked in a survey said they experienced it every week.

Most common upsells include larger coffees, bigger meals, sweets and chocolates and side dishes such as onion rings and chips.

Many are unhealthy options, with the average person who accepts, consuming 17,000 extra calories a year, enough to gain an extra 5lbs in weight.

One fast-food restaurant worker told researchers: “I’ve been trained so that if a customer asks for a product, I always ask if they’d like to make that a meal.”

Which has annoyed the Royal Society for Public Health. ITHOUT quite noticing how it happened, every town is now full of vaping shops.

They have invaded high streets and market halls as smokers turn away from the hard stuff to take the softer and healthier option of the e-cigarette.

Years ago, when tobacco was king, cigarettes were available from newsagents but every town also had tobacconist shops, those specialist establishments that sold everything from Rizlas to cigars to ready rubbed, pipes to Passing Clouds.

This was where the aficionado went to enjoy heady aromas and exotic display posters featuring sportsmen and ladies of sophistication.

Advertising suggested you had to smoke to be taken seriously as an adult.

There was a tobacconist near my first newspaper, the Knutsford Guardian, which so fascinated me and two trainee journalists, that we bought foot-long white clay pipes and walked around town puffing away as if reincarnated from the 18th century.

Knutsford was the sort of place where a percentage of the population looked as if they really had been reincarnated so no-one blinked an eye.

That same shop enticed me into buying a pipe, which made me look stupid and feel ill, and cured me of the urge to smoke for the rest of my life.

You need a certain gravitas and

But whilst their intentions are laudable, shouldn’t they also consider that customers are grown ups who have the power to invoke common sense, free choice and willpower.

When I’ve eaten enough, I stop. I don’t feel a compunction to clear my plate or have a coffee big enough to paddle in.

RSPH chief executive Shirley Cramer says the industry should stop upselling and instead focus on healthy alternatives.

Which is great in theory but: “Would you like a carrot with that,” does not have the same appeal as: “Would you like chips with that?” constitution to smoke a pipe that I did not have at the age of 20.

My mother, on the other hand, took possession of it and happily chuffed away like Thomas the Tank Engine whilst watching television.

Ah, those smoky nights of The Army Game and Emergency Ward 10 in the front room.

Smoking’s link with cancer and ill health began to gain publicity from the 1960s, although it took another 30 years to be taken seriously.

Since then the risks have become well known and changing perceptions, health awareness, the smoking ban in pubs and vaping have all contributed to people giving up the habit.

The Office for National Statistics say smoking rates are at the lowest level ever recorded.

In 2016, the figure was down to 15.8% of adults (7.6 million people). A Public Health England independent review found e-cigarettes are around 95 per cent safer than smoking and they have helped long-term tobacco addicts give up the weed.

It seems like a no brainer that many choose to vape instead.

Now, every High Street is packed with vaping stores that have their own specialised appeal.

They offer liquids that come in sweet shop flavours – strawberry, pear drops, aniseed and liquorice – and devices that range from a delicate cigarette shape to one like an Uzi submachine Who remembers Hobson and Son, the tobacconist at the junction of New Street and High Street, which is now part of The Commercial? (Picture courtesy of Raphael Morris). Below : A sophisticated-looking lady gun.

You can even get vaping cigars that look like the real thing, and a range of handsome pipes for those with the proper gravitas.

Those old fashioned tobacconist shops have gone, although many will recall them with fond nostalgia. But, as they say, there’s no future in nostalgia. Especially when there’s a safer option.