Tennant lit up screen as Nilsen

DAVID Tennant turned in a masterly performance on ITV as Dennis Nilsen. But given the deep horror of what Nilsen did, it is difficult to believe that people have complained that the show encouraged smoking because as one wit put it, the only one not smoking was Nilsen’s dog.

It was a different age, when there was a whole etiquette around facilitating smoking from the supply of ashtrays for guests to urging them to smoke from the host’s cigarette box rather than their own cigarette case. Now of course smoking in someone else’s house is taboo.

The portrayal of Nilsen by Tennant, above, could not realistically have been as a non- smoker.

Anyway, who would be encouraged to smoke by watching a serial killer do it?