Have you ever smoked a pipe?
You don't see it very much these days do you. Time was, when I were a lad, that you'd get men smoking pipes everywhere. Even about 20 years ago I worked with someone who smoke a small pipe, but he was a bit of a young fogey, wore tweed hats and had a moustache and reckoned he was a bit of an intellectual. But it was all affectation. He always smelt of oranges and tobacco, and had a fat girlfriend and lived near Queens Park Rangers stadium.
No one in the family ever smoked a pipe, and I don't recall any of my parent's friends doing it either. It was more the reserve of teachers and vicars and retirees. Okay, you saw the odd dickhead student thinking he was John Osborne for about a term, but no one stuck with it. Why would you?
I can't think of a single person I know under the age of 65 who smokes a pipe. I don't even know if you can still buy them. You don't see kids smoking pipes, and neither did you when I was at school. No one was having a Condor moment behind the bike sheds. It was Kensitas or Consulate a go-go.
People complain that cigarette smoke is foul, but it's nothing compared to pipe smoke. It's thick, woody and stifling, and really far worse than a simple fag. I'm sure that's why it's all but died out. If you're a smoker like me, it's hard to imagine every enjoying a pipe. All that loose tobacco stuffed in the end of a churchwarden or a meerschaum and then puffed and puffed until it sparks alight, and then keeps going out. What a faff.
So correct me if I'm wrong, but is pipe smoking dead? Do they still do Pipesmoker Of The Year? Wasn't it David Bryant? Again.
