That didn’t take long, did it?

Less than a week after the closing date for submissions to the consultation on smoke-free public places, the anti-smoking lobby is on manoeuvres to push the government to go even further than the current proposals.

I was in London on Saturday to see the penultimate performance of Jerusalem at the Tower Theatre in Stoke Newington.

Written by Jez Butterworth, the multi award-winning play was first performed at the Royal Court Theatre in 2009 with Mark Rylance and Mackenzie Crook in the lead roles.

My son recently spent a month working on a dairy farm in Devon.

He’s worked there before and this time he was asked to help during the calving season, which meant long days – and sometimes nights – in the fields.

The closing date for the Government consultation on ‘Smoke-free, heated tobacco-free and vape-free places in England’ is this Friday (May 8).

I know many of you are sceptical about ‘public’ consultations, and I’m with you on that. Nevertheless …

An article about smoking has caused a bit of a stink (no pun intended).

Written by Xochitl Gonzalez, a New York Times best-selling author and Pulitzer Prize finalist, it was published last week by The Cut, an online magazine that is part of New York Magazine.

I was on BBC Radio Ulster this morning talking to Stephen Nolan about the generational tobacco ban.

Nolan is one of the BBC’s highest paid presenters and after introducing me he said, “There’s something in my head I’ve been talking to you for about 20 years. Have you been around a long time?”.

The Times reports that Chapel Down sold a million bottles of English sparkling wine ‘for the first time last year’ and hopes to capture ‘1 per cent of the global champagne market by 2035’.

I can’t remember when I first discovered Chapel Down wines but my interest in English wines began about ten years ago.

It was announced today that the Tobacco and Vapes Bill has received Royal Assent and become law.

The Press Association reported the story by leading with a quote from Rishi Sunak, the former Conservative prime minister who introduced the idea of a generational ban in the UK in October 2023.