How went our ‘Last Smoke’ dinner on Thursday, hosted by the Spec’s Andrew Neil at London’s swish Four Seasons Hotel? If not so grand, there were doubtless other such tobacco requiems all around the country. Nicely apt, somehow, that Nanny Blair’s smoking ban coincides with her own cursing, unlamented departure from the nursery. All ‘final gasp’ mourners should have raised a timely toast for happily, poignantly, sport itself handsomely helped celebrate last rites only a week ago when the convivial chain-smoking Argentine, Angel Cabrera, won the US Open championship, leaving Tiger Woods and all the cold-eyed, humourless gym-junkies of professional golf in fretful conclave with their tight-lipped fitness trainers and ‘performance’ shrinks. Fifty-a-day Cabrera has not entered a health club in his life. Said the jovial 37-year-old one-man band: ‘Everyone else on the tour carry round obsessed personal nutritionists and psychologists. I eat steak, drink red wine, and I smoke.
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