Quel horreur! The French government is going to ban smoking in public places. I am outraged. France was the one place we smokers felt safe to savour a cigarette and a chocolate chaud with the morning papers, without worrying we would be clamped in irons and dragged away by the police.
I lived in Paris as a student, and it's a grown-up city. Nights in Paris are bohemian, wanton, a bit decadent. It's no coincidence that Paris has spurned Starbucks: it doesn't want its nightlife sanitised, nor to spend its evenings twitching desperately as nicotine withdrawal symptoms hit.
And of course, cafes are the creative heart of the capital. Over the years, they are where artists and philosophers have gathered; Jean-Paul Sartre, Albert Camus, Picasso, Matisse, James Joyce, Scott Fitzgerald...the list goes on. All serious French intellectuals smoke - surely genius burns brightest in a cloud of Gauloises? Slightly more prosaically, I studied hardcore French grammar at the Sorbonne - but how can anyone endure that without a cigarette to steady the nerves?
French Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin says that cafes, nightclubs and restaurants can designate spaces for smoking only if they are 'hermetically sealed areas, furnished with air-extraction systems and subject to extremely rigorous health norms.' How romantic that sounds!
We've seen wildly glamorous French film stars smoking - think Jean-Paul Belmondo in A Bout de Souffle. We laugh at the French bar owner who keeps a fag clamped between his teeth while talking, eating, and presumably, sleeping. As far as I can tell, French people smoke everywhere. But apparently the vast majority of the French public is in favour of the ban. It's all very baffling.
So enjoy it while you can, Messieurs et Mesdames. It will soon be time to stub out. I'll let Oscar Wilde have the last word on this one, with a fine example of the cigarette's ability to unleash profound thoughts: 'A cigarette is the perfect type of a perfect pleasure. It is exquisite, and it leaves one unsatisfied. What more can one want?'
