Should I be glad that hope still springs in my addict breast? I knew, of course, in the Era of Vomiting and Screams that drinking a glass of water between each real drink was not a definitive cure for alcoholism. But I enjoyed slopping around; filled with optimism, mad hopes and weak vodka.

So, when I resolved to live without my dearest friend nicotine, I did not really believe that I could painlessly make the break by smoking Hamlets for 15 minutes, then stopping forever. Nor, in the First Obese Era, did living off a diet of Jaffa Cakes and chocolate eclairs render me slim. But the aversion therapy putsch was a comforting idea and I wanted to hug the beloved moron Tanya who retains her faith in miracles in the snarling gob of reality.

Puffing continuously at a wide variety of cigarettes from dawn to dust was interesting. It was, of course, revolting but I have never minded that. If excess had ever been sufficient to deter, we all-or-nothing whores would be gods of celibacy and denial for those who go off at half cock and live on half-pints and a kind of desultory misery.

There were long, thin, tan cigarettes. They threatened vertigo and turned me into a Clint Eastwood impersonator, because I had to clamp them, grimacing, between my teeth to stop them tumbling into my cleavage. There were stubby French things which made me feel cool, like Albert Camus. Unfortunately, between moody photographs, Camus bobbed from the waist and hacked like a hatchet.

There were long "mentholated" tubes, which tasted like sticking plasters from a pharmacy, and "cigarillos", which cut my throat at the first drag. There were "lite" cigarettes, too, all sold in cardboard pastel horrors with a touch of repressed gilt. They made me gasp far worse than the strong varieties, at which I politely sip, because I had to draw on them like a possessed Dyson. I tried cigars. I do not like the brownness of cigars.

And so the room and my brain filled with fug and my heart beat a constant tattoo, and I got a cold, which might normally have deterred me, but, ever mindful of my calling, I hacked on. The cough should win an award.

I am, of course, still smoking. I am smoking and smoking and smoking. I have returned to the arthritic arms of my Marlboros. Next time I will speak to you of patches. They are beige, but never mind.