It’s a stretch now to imagine a time when cigarette packets weren’t plastered with tracheotomies and rotten toes, and smoking was something you did in offices, homes and restaurants, instead of a shameful act, furtively executed in a plastic vivarium at the airport or in a urine-scented gap between two wheelie bins, while passersby stare at you in open disgust.
But smoking used to be glamorous, kids, and that was at least partly down to the magic of advertising. Tobacco might be a definite Bad Thing, but trying to persuade people to put a burning paper tube of dangerous acrid leaves in their mouths has led to some extraordinary feats of creativity.
