The sexy new face of cigarette packaging

Something for which to thank the government, at last. It is much, much more fun buying cigarettes these days. It was quite good fun when they stopped having the fags on display and you had to play a kind of pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey game with the woman behind the counter. A bit like that section in Play School where you had to guess if it was behind the round window or the square window or the other window, a sort of arched regency type of thing. The woman scurrying hither and thither, pulling back shutters and scouring the shelves, not allowed to open all compartments at one time in case everybody suddenly dies of cancer because they’ve seen some cigarettes.

But now it’s better still. From May next year onwards all cigarettes must be in plain packaging, with nothing to distinguish each packet from the next except the name of the brand at the bottom. Which frankly is a bit of a giveaway, if you ask me. It just means it takes slightly longer for the lass behind the counter to locate the brand I want, which is annoying for her.

But that’s not where the fun comes in. The fun is in the photographs which now by law must adorn each carton and are the only immediately distinguishing feature of each packet. Photographs of people who have been really messed up by smoking (even if a good few of the hilariously gruesome images were not occasioned by tobacco at all, and are basically a lie). I’ve started playing Nicotine Poker with a bunch of friends who smoke and so am amassing a large number of empty cartons. A royal flush is five packets which depict a woman hawking up blood into a handkerchief. Very difficult to collect. Or there’s a full house — three of the Asian man with rotting gums, plus two tracheostomies.