After 55 years of puffing, Penny Mortimer’s last fag has been lit
Penny Mortimer smoked for 55 years – despite Cherie Blair’s disapproval – until a hypnotist came along
On 12th July 2017 I had not smoked a cigarette for one whole year. A year earlier, two months before I turned 70, I visited a hypnotist in Swiss Cottage, London. She talked to me for three hours; it wasn’t any of the stuff one associates with hypnotism – the counting up and down or the clicking of fingers. She droned on a bit and then I left, having been told to crumble my remaining cigarettes and throw them in the bin.
I started smoking when I was 14. I had joined the local badminton club, and a girl of 16, named Beth, took me into the back room and taught me how to do it ‘properly’. It wasn’t pleasurable but I thought it was what would nowadays be called ‘cool’.
My mother then smoked about ten cigarettes every evening, and I would pinch a couple from her packet and go and milk the goats on our pig farm. The stench in the goat shed easily masked the smell of tipped Gold Leaf.
After university, I came to London. It was the end of the 1960s and almost everybody seemed to smoke – just like in Mad Men, where Don Draper and the rest of the crew chain-smoke through every episode.
When I was 24 and pregnant with my first daughter [the actress Emily Mortimer], I went to see an eminent gynaecologist in Harley Street. On his desk sat a packet of twenty Player’s cigarettes and a gold lighter. Spotting these, I said, ‘I suppose I’d better stop smoking, had I?’
‘Oh no,’ he said. ‘I mean, you could cut it down a bit, if you wanted to. It might make the baby a little smaller, but we don’t like big babies.’ If a doctor said that to a patient today, he or she would be struck off.
As the anti-smoking lobby grew more vociferous, my rebellious streak grew. My husband – John Mortimer, the writer – and I were invited to dinner at Chequers, almost a year to the day after Labour won the 1997 election, before the smoking ban was introduced.
It was a beautiful May evening and about 16 of us were standing on the terrace, surrounded by 1,200 acres of fresh Buckinghamshire air. I had heard that Cherie Blair did not allow smoking in the house – the house where Winston Churchill smoked his cigars, where politicians from behind the Iron Curtain and trades union leaders puffed on their roll-ups. Standing next to her on the terrace, sipping my glass of champagne, I said, ‘You won’t mind if I smoke out here, will you, Cherie?’
‘Well, I’ll allow you just one, if you really have to, Penny,’ she said, ‘But it is a filthy habit.’ So I lit up one in either hand.
Other people weren’t putting up with the aggressive, self-righteous anti brigade. At that time, a well-known theatrical agent was lunching at his usual table in The Ivy restaurant in London.
When the coffee arrived, he lit a large cigar and was puffing happily on it when an American man at the next table picked up his glass of water and doused the cigar.
The agent didn’t remonstrate but calmly paid his bill, lit another large cigar and, as he left, stubbed it out in the American’s risotto.
One of my sons-in-law is a good tennis player – both of them are, but this one takes his prowess quite seriously. One day in Italy, I was playing against him on the court of a local castle. As he was looking for balls to continue serving, I lit a fag, stuck it between my lips and crouched in the feet-apart stance to receive serve. He bounced the ball several times, looked up at me at the other end of the court and lost his concentration!
I derived a fair amount of pleasure from smoking – so why did I give it up? I’m not sure. A couple of years ago, I suffered a burst appendix and was ill for a long time, spending sizeable periods in hospital. Of course, one isn’t allowed to smoke in hospital but this didn’t cause me much anguish. Still, every time I came out and got into the car, the first thing I did was light up a cigarette and, from then on, chain-smoke. When I was bedridden at home, I was getting through two packs a day – cigarettes were my friends, always there for me and a great comfort.
But, after I started to return to normal life, I began to think about the inconvenience of the habit. When my daughters were staying with me, they didn’t allow me to smoke in the house because of the harm to their children. It didn’t cut me any slack when I told Emily that, when I was breastfeeding her, I smoked Gitanes, and she has since only ever been in hospital to have her babies. After my daughters’ smoking ban, a neighbour came into my conservatory, in deep midwinter, and fell about laughing at the ridiculousness of seeing me, huddled up in my mink coat, puffing away.
I was shocked to find my forty fags a day cost £7,500 a year. Then a friend told me they knew someone who had given up a three-pack-a-day habit after seeing a hypnotist. I made the appointment and here I am today, smoke free.
Am I happy? I am pleased I have the willpower to quit, and delighted that I no longer have a cough and that there are no dirty ashtrays in my house. But I have to admit I do miss it sometimes and feel envious when I see people lighting up, sitting outside cafés and bars on sunny days.
I quit smoking when I was almost 70. As there probably won’t be much else to look forward to, I think I will take up smoking again when I’m 80 – if I get that far.