It probably passed you by, but on Tuesday the Welsh Senedd passed a legislative consent motion (LCM) in support of the UK government’s Tobacco and Vapes Bill.

Inevitably, members of the Senedd voted overwhelmingly in favour, but one who voted against was Conservative health spokesman, James Evans.

My mother was 95 last week. She came to stay with us in Cambridgeshire and on Friday we had lunch at West Mersea Yacht Club in Essex where her late brother was a member.

Mersea Island is connected to the mainland via Strood Causeway which is the only way to reach the island ‘unless you're sailing in by boat’, which we weren’t.

‘People think there's a choice between smoking and immortality, but we've all got to die of something.’ Tom Stoppard

The acclaimed playwright who has died, aged 88, was an inveterate smoker, which is why I invited him to the annual Forest lunch at Boisdale in 2022. (Spoiler: he didn’t come.)

When we quoted Daily Mail columnist Tom Utley in the latest Forest newsletter, little did we know he was days from retirement.

His final column, published today, means we have lost one of the few smoker-friendly voices that still exist in the mainstream media.

Last week, at a lunch at the House of Lords, I sat opposite The Rt Hon The Lord McLoughlin. The name was familiar so I asked him if he was the former Conservative MP for Derbyshire Dales. He was.

Impressively, given the size of the largely rural constituency, he was able to describe the tiny hamlet where my parents lived, noting the narrow lane that leads up to the old Norman church.

For many years, Alun Gwyn Jones was a career soldier. After he left the army in 1961 he joined The Times as defence correspondent.

Three years later he was summoned to see Harold Wilson, the new Labour prime minister, and much to everyone’s surprise, including his own, he departed the meeting having been made a life peer and a minister at the Foreign Office, despite the fact that he was neither a socialist nor, prior to his appointment, a member of the Labour Party.

I was a guest on Last Orders, the Spiked podcast, last week.

Hosted by Tom Slater, editor of the online magazine Spiked, and the IEA’s Chris Snowdon, each episode addresses three topical issues, usually from a libertarian perspective.

Tobacco magazine in Hungary has published the second of a two-part interview I did last month.

Not sure why they used this photo. Was it something I said?!