A moment of stress-clouded weakness earlier in the year led me to take up smoking again after a three-year break. I think God must have learned there was a 39-year-old Scotsman out there who’d marginally increased his life expectancy, and He wasn’t having any of it.
I always find the best time to start smoking again is just before a global pandemic that attacks the human respiratory system.
A lot’s changed since I’ve been away from the heady world of smoking, but unfortunately not the bit about cigarettes killing you. Apparently that’s still a thing. But the packaging has changed. The ante has been well and truly upped. The uncle, too. Hell, the whole fucking family. Lung surgery. Dead guys. Babies having a fly fag. I wouldn’t be surprised to pick up a packet of baccy one day to see it emblazoned with the elevator of blood from The Shining, along with the caption, ‘All smoke and no vape makes Jack a dead boy.’
My favourite warning picture is the one where a woman is sporting a mighty cough face while holding out a blood-spattered hanky. It made me laugh. Not because I find the thought of mouth and lung cancer hilarious – although if we’re all being honest with ourselves it’s probably still slightly funnier than Mrs Browns’ Boys – but because it got me to thinking about the woman in the photograph.
Some of the people featured on fag and baccy packets are real, especially the ones with sunken faces and tubes coming out of them. Sometimes these images have been used without permission. But cough lady is almost certainly an actress/model. How do I know this?
Let me set the scene.
RING RING, RING RING
“Hello?”
“Hi, I’m a photographer. I heard smoking gave you cancer. Mind if I come round and snap a picture of you having a bit of a big cough?”
“Sure. Come over. My baby smokes too if you want to get a few snaps of him at the same time?”
The photographer has been in the woman’s house for thirty minutes…
“Sure you don’t feel a wee cough coming on, ma’am?”
“Nope. Not at the moment.”
“…Want me to get you a packet of Salt and Vinegar Squares from the car; they’re pretty sharp, might help gee it along?”
“No thanks.”
(looks at watch) “It’s just I’ve got a bum cancer shoot in about forty minutes… maybe if you smoked a cigarette?”
“How dare you come in here an…CRU CRU HU HUUU HUU OHH HO HO HUH!”
(grabs camera) “Oh, brilliant, love, that’s it. Spew that lung for daddy! FANTASTIC, is that blood? Just hold it up there, yep, oh, that’s it, red like a rose. Red like Santa’s toilet paper after a bumpy sleigh ride. Just tilt it to me, love – maybe look a bit more horrified? PERFECT! The camera loves you, baby!”
That’s a photo shoot I couldn’t see even the world’s most ethically compromised photographer taking part in, much less the ‘model’. So the woman must have been hired from an agency. Specialising in what, exactly?
“Darling, I’m waiting on my agent calling, don’t use the phone!”
“It’s 2020, though, everyone’s got mobiles?”
“I know, darling, but the guy writing this blog used RING RING a few paragraphs back, he’s clearly something of a throwback, can we please just go with this?”
RING RING, RING RING
“Hello? (lowers receiver, covers mouthpiece) DARLING, IT’S MY AGENT! DON’T GO ON THE INTERNET, EITHER, I NEED THIS PHONE LINE TO STAY FREE. YOU CAN GO ON FRIENDS REUNITED LATER!”
“….”
“Sorry, hi. Thanks for phoning. You got me an audition? Oh I knew this moment would come! My big moment. My parents will finally be proud of me. What have you got for me? Cinema ad? Shakespeare play? Small part in a movie? Recurring role in Eastenders?
(silence)
You want me to pretend to have cancer in a photo?”
(husband sneaks up the hall with a bunch of flowers)
(she waves him away, shakes her head solemnly, lowers receiver again)
“Darling, you’d better cancel that Mini-Disc player we ordered through Littlewoods.”
Some strange things go through my head, they really do. Then I got to thinking, is there an awards’ night for people in this niche of the industry?
“Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the sixth annual awards gala for ‘People Whose Images Are Used in Terrifying and Embarrassing Ways’. And the nominations are… Barbara Findlayson, for ‘Woman pulling her mouth into an ‘O’ shape due to severe vaginal itching’. (polite applause) Jacob Graham for ‘Old man pishes himself at the bowling’. (polite applause) Gloria Fonko, for ‘Woman screams because a spider bit her on the tit’. (polite applause) And Karen Globenstein, for ‘Woman who coughs blood and little bits of Salt & Vinegar Squares crisps into her favourite hanky because she’s got the cancer’. (whoops and cheers) Karen, get on up here, you son of a bitch!”
(Karen jumps to her feet and starts screaming with excitement) “TOMMY, CALL ARGOS AND GET THAT MINI-DISC PLAYER BACK ON THE GO. THROW IN A LASERDISC! FUCK IT, GET A FURBY AND A STEP-MASTER, TOO!”
Good on you, Karen.
Who says smoking is bad for you?
