I assume you were referring to the e-free Clark Grable, best known of course for playing Brett Rutland opposite Vivien Stanshall's Scarlett Johansson.

(Hang on, now I'll read the rest of it....)

Huff was a comedy/drama with Frank Azaria and Paget Brewster as his screen wife about 3 years ago. At bedtime he would often be smoking and, even as a smoker myself of some 20 years standing, my thought was "no-one smokes in bed any more, do they?" (people over 23, I mean), particularly rich professionals in California like Huff. I don't even know anyone who smokes in their own house anymore.

Pat Phoenix used to smoke a cigarette better than Lauren Bacall could ever dream of doing. I wonder when exactly Coronation Street phased out smoking? It seems to have happened by stealth. But someone must have made a decision at some point. I think that decision could be the cultural tipping point between "Smoking Hooray!" and "Smoking Boo!" It's as good as any.

It has a sub-plot about smoking in movies.

huddled under the awning outside a small cafe"? Nah, that won't work.

I was kooking at a page that compiled a load of "they wouldn't get away with that nowadays" cigarette ads.

More here.

My favourite is the way that in many shows - particularly in the US - if someone dare drink more than two half glasses of piss-weak beer on more than one occasion, you can pretty much guarantee that person is soon to feature in a storyline about their alcohol abuse. No one is ever able to go out and get royally smashed even once without it being indicative of some major character flaw that requires major soul searching and apologies all round. It's never allowed to be a case of someone occasionally drinking too much but actually just having a good time with no negative consequences. It has to be commented on.

Although not quite the same thing, it also brings to mind Stephen Fry's last 'Podgram' in which he rants about the Health and Safety people (AKA'compliance') on television shoots.

Fry explains that in a program such as Spooks, it is considered perfectly permissible for one person to murder another, but if a character attempts to use a mobile phone while driving a car - even if this might be a member of the security forces desperately attempting to avert a terrorism incident, for example, the compliance people will not allow that person to drive a car and call for assistance on a mobile phone even though that it blatantly what would happen in real life.

From the compliance guidelines:

"Safety & the law
We should normally observe the law, both in the UK and other countries, unless there is clear editorial justification for not doing so. This includes ensuring that presenters, actors and contributors use seatbelts, fit child car seats correctly, use crash helmets and the correct mobile phone equipment when driving."

But it's perfectly fine to shoot another human being dead.

So, my point is that TV was never that good at these things anyway.

Back on topic, are there actually many roles which actually unquestionably require smoking? It's normally down to the whim of the actor or director, isn't it, lovey-dahling?

1. Although in general American networks are, as you say, prudish about drinking, we were only discussing the other day just how much drinking takes place in both "The Sopranos" and the programme that David Simon made. Every night after work the police and dock workers chase down their beers with rye whisky. Tony Soprano would have been run in by the traffic police most days if the amount he drinks for lunch is anything to go by. Maybe that's just HBO doing it because they can.
2. I think there are very few roles that require smoking. In the case of the play I saw the other day if none of the cast had smoked I wouldn't have wondered why. It's a convention I'm prepared to accept.

are very well acquainted with "theatrical cigs". Fnarr fnarr.

I enjoy moments in football coverage from the 70s where sportsmen are openly smoking. YouTube lacks it but footage from the classic 1979 Arsenal v Man U FA Cup Final shows much of the Arsenal bench smoking at some points, manager included.

Natch, the legendary ITV World Cup panel - Dougan, Allison, Cantwell et al - involves both cigarettes and alcohol apparently.

But avoid the smoking shelter outside the door.

I much prefer the office scenes, late at night, when someone opens a draw to pour out a glass of whiskey. Has anyone here (who works in an office) ever done that? Sacking offence wherever I have worked. Except the brewery, of course, but I only had beer not spirits...

The Dennis Waterman character in New Tricks - a pretty mainstream, prime time show - smokes. Not in the office though. He has to slip out for a crafty one. The “bike shed” scenario is, I’d have thought, a useful plot device. It brings people together - and smokers chat to each other in these situations, usually about the smoking ban - that wouldn’t otherwise meet.
I blame the smoking ban for there being no third series of Early Doors.

They smoke everywhere - and I mean EVERYWHERE - and drink all day long. The office is a fug of smoke.

I'm just old enough to remember when you could smoke in the office, and even being a smoker is wasn't pleasant.

I've never been one for smoking carriages, etc., and so I'm glad they've vanished.

I don't like smoking shelters either, or the knot of smokers outside every workplace in Britain, but you do what you have to do.

Was Kes the last film to show kids smoking on film, Kids do smoke but i can't remember seeing them doing it on tv in ages even after 9pm. Has anyone be caught tabbing it on eastenders by their mum?
Also as smoking is beaten out of films how are poeple going to light sticks of dynamite, burn through ropes, improvise a molotov cocktails is ray mears going to be on over time with his flint and tinder.
lastly there never going to get a decent cover shot for jazz cd ever again.

As a committed and enthusiastic smoker I'm disgusted by the fact I have to see a billboard advert opposite my office every day promoted by this lovely bunch of health nazis:

http://www.d-myst.info/index.php

The billboard calls for a ban on smoking in films. Liverpool is very good at this sort of thing - they are also currently looking to ban happy meals in McDonalds in all Liverpool stores.

However, as anti all this business that I am I can actually say that films did cause me to smoke. Aged 10 years old I did a lot of acting / child modelling and won a part in John Boorman's mid-eighties film 'Hope and Glory'. I played one of the gang of tear aways who run riot on the bomb sites and throughout the scenes we were required to smoke. As far as I can remember this was with real cigarettes - we even had a bloke from the crew teach us how to do it. Can I sue John Boorman?

I've tried to find a clip of me smoking in the film but could only find this one. I'm the kid in a green jumper on the second row looking at the camera:

This is the cover for The Beatles Capital Albums Vol.2.

They photoshopped it to remove something from Ringo's hand...

As a non-smoker I have found the smoking ban has actually made me want to re-introduce smoking in some places. For example being in a band it's really annoying that when you play a gig, everyone loiters outside the pub smoking until they notice the band has started playing, and then meander in, so you often play the first song or more to a very sparse crowd - I think this will lead a lot of bands to play some kind of warm-up/filler-jam for 3 minutes at the start of their sets. And a lot of pubs/clubs now just smell of sweat, stale beer and flatulence, all of which are pretty unpleasant and may well be contributing to the demise of many pubs since the ban came in. (Almost all the local pubs in my area are up for let).

On a vaguely related note, when I was involved in drama at secondary school there was one play we did that had a bottle of Drambuie as a prop, and it actually had Drambuie in it. Needless to say, as the rehearsals and the shows progressed, the level in the bottle gradually diminished.....

I see the same knot of smokers standing outside different pubs over an evening in my locale. They'll go to one & then stand outside, proceed to another & stand outside that & then on to a third to stand outside that. Why don't they stay outside the same damn place? I don't think each change of scenery causes them to reach new heights of wit & repartee.
I'm also gobsmacked by the way smokers (and I'm one, albeit a rather fey 5-a-day man) suck down one fag after another at any contact with the great outdoors, almost sticking two fingers up to the society that's marginalised them. Where I work, three or four dedicated puffers work their way through four fags each in their lunch half-hour, in all winds and weathers.

I used to love smerking tabs. Now I'm too scared to try keeping a lid on it at one pack of Capstan Full Strength a day, so I stay nicotine free. Sometimes I think I'd be happier ignorant and poisoned.

As a confirmed smoker watching this film was torture.

David Strathain - V underrated actor in my opinion - plays the journalist Edward R Murrow, and I swear that he has a cigarette on the go in almost every scene.

Filmed in black and white and with every set looking grey, you see the swirl of cigarette smoke almost seeming to fill the screen and it makes me, every time I see the film, want to grab a large whisky, light up, and settle back to enjoy the movie (a deliberate use of that word to describe this particular film). As you can tell I like the film!

See
as an example.

Mind you Joe McCarthy would have nothing on my other half were I actually to light up at home! I would probably be alright with the dram..

I was astonished to see a picture of Dimitar Berbatov smoking a fag the other day (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/foo...ing-loner.html). Do professional footballers still smoke? Clearly he thinks he is the next Albert Camus. Thank God he didn't sign for City.

Good article here:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/2006/jul/07/newsstory.sport

http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2008/sep/16/healthandwellbeing.fi...

...One meets a far more interesting type in the knots of confirmed smokers outside buildings. Commonly known as snoutcasts or exhales, I remember being at a modern dance performance long ago at a theatre where smoking was forbidden and almost all the smokers outside were dancers who were nevertheless capable of astonishingly balletic moves

Here in Beijing I can smoke pretty much where I please - except in taxis. Now BAT, Philip Morris et.al have no market left in the EU and North America, they are flooding this one and competing in a price war with the local brands. Cigarette prices start from about two pounds a carton.

In China, no soap opera would be complete without the underdog hero (generally a policeman, fireman or soldier who has lost a girlfriend/wife/family in tragic circumstances) being proffered a consoling snout from a product-placed packet.