RICHARD LITTLEJOHN: If Labour bans pub smoking, next will be booze, fast food, meat, chocolate and anything else sour Left-wing harpies disapprove of

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Come to think of it, I started smoking properly when I was 11. Tony Saunders, who ran the newsagents where I had my paper round paid in cigarettes. Five Park Drive tipped would last me until it was time to go to school.

A few years later, when I got a job on the local rag, the chief reporter chucked me a fag as I walked through the door for the first time, before we had been formally introduced. Then he threw up in the waste-paper basket.

That was my introduction to the Fourth Estate. Welcome to The House Of Fun, old son.

Smoking wasn't so much encouraged as compulsory for a young trainee journalist, along with a grubby white mac from Burton's, shorthand notebook and Biro.

Player's Number 6 was the common currency, one remove above smoking the sweepings from a barber's floor. But it was all I could afford on a weekly wage of £8/6s/8d in old money. That's eight pounds and 33p in Centigrade.

'Commissars of our new, intolerant, lemon-sucking Labour Government want to go still further and ban smoking altogether, even in pub gardens. Sorry, but that's a bridge too far.'

Latterly, after a couple of inflationary pay rises, I graduated to Peter Stuyvesant Gold, the height of sophistication in the 1970, along with a well-done rump steak and an Irish coffee or three from the fixed menu at the Berni Inn.

By age 18, I was a 60-a-day man as a basis for negotiation. Then, a year later, I went cold turkey and gave up altogether, after realising that every time I walked the dog I was wheezing like a blind man playing the accordion outside Woolworth's to supplement his meagre war pension.

Haven't touched a cigarette since, although for a few years I did make a point of firing up a small Cohiba every National No-Smoking Day, simply to annoy the humourless, self-righteous zealots who react to the merest whiff of smoke, even outdoors, with a manic impersonation of a whirling dervish.

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Eventually, I got bored with that small gesture of protest. But the libertarian in me continued to oppose Labour's draconian smoking ban.

In 2004, I presented a live TV show from the Gresham Hotel in Dublin, on the weekend the Irish government was imposing its own illiberal ban on the dreaded tobacco weed. When Britain followed suit, the predictions of wholesale pub closures came horribly true – 700-plus in the past year alone.

I could never understand why landlords couldn't decide whether or not to allow smoking in their boozers. Leave it up to the punters to decide where to drink.

In the US, the original smoking ban only extended to establishments which served food. Pretzels didn't count. Plenty of bars binned the burgers in favour of their hard-drinking, chain-smoking regulars.

My Eureka moment came a few years ago when I went to a pub in Midsommer Murders country with my LBC Radio colleague and resident witch doctor Michael Van Straten, a self-styled 'health guru' who could smoke for Britain.

There was a roaring log fire and everyone was puffing away with both hands. You couldn't see the bar for the fug.

I drove home smelling as if I'd spent the night in a Jacuzzi full of liquid nicotine after grilling steaks on a wood-fired barbeque.

Later I called a mate of mine the morning after a night before on a pub crawl in Soho. He apologised for not picking up the phone earlier.

'I was in the garden, burning my suit,' he explained.

Those were the days when even Sketchley's dry cleaners couldn't rid your clothes of the stench of stale tobacco. So, gradually, despite my ingrained opposition to the Nanny State, I came round to the idea of smoke-free pubs and restaurants.

Nigel Farage, now leader of Reform UK, enjoys a cigarette and a pint of Guinness back in 2015

Now, though, the commissars of our new, intolerant, lemon-sucking Labour Government want to go still further and ban smoking altogether, even in pub gardens.

Sorry, but that's a bridge too far. Yes, there's nothing more dispiriting than the dwindling numbers of nico-addicts puffing away in the rain outside pubs and clubs. If there's one thing which winds me up, it's drinkers expecting to reserve their stool at the bar while they nip outside for a nifty ciggy.

And the sight of cancer patients on drips lighting up next to the front of doors of hospitals, like a picket line sponsored by Benson & Hedges, turns my stomach. Why not just cut out the middle man and check in to the nearest undertakers?

My only, niggling reservation is that if Labour get away with this, their next move will be to ban smoking altogether, even in your own home.

Then it'll be booze, fast food, red meat, chocolate, anything of which Pixie Balls-Cooper and the other sour-faced Left-wing harpies disapprove.

The way things are going, I may have to renounce my 50 years as a non-smoker and resume my Cohiba protest daily, outside the Department of Health.

I leave you with the wit and wisdom of the Singing Postman, Allan Smethurst, who was in a consensual relationship, as they say, with the tailor who made the suits we wore on my first newspaper.

Have you got a light, boy?

Earlier this week, we revealed that squaddies are having to shout ‘bang, bang’ in training exercises because of a shortage of equipment and ammunition.

This is straight out of the Dad’s Army songbook and makes a mockery of Labour’s ‘commitment’ to increase defence spending to 2.5 per cent of GDP, once they’ve finished hosing down their favourite unions in the public sector.

Now we learn that the Chelsea Pensioners have been spared from becoming the latest victims of Starmer’s military budget cuts.

Putin must be trembling in his boots. At this rate, when World War III breaks out, the Chelsea Pensioners will be our last line of defence, with bayonets taped to broomsticks poking out of Corporal Jones’s butcher’s van.

Bang, two-three!

Today’s edition of Things Can Only Get Worse Before They Get Better features the news that supermarkets are putting electronic security tags on cheese and storing it in locked cabinets because of the shoplifting epidemic which police can’t be bothered to tackle. I don’t know whether to file it under Mind How You Go or Makes You Proud To Be British. 

Join the dots. The news that Martha Reeves is planning to hike petrol duty in her ‘screw the rich’ Budget in October can’t be separated from the far-Left enthusiasm for 20mph speed limits.

Turns out that at a constant 20mph, cars can do as much as 90 miles to the gallon. Which means we’re all buying less unleaded, so the tax take is plummeting.

Brilliant!

Another example of the law of unintended consequences. Stand by for the rushed introduction of pay-per-mile, and remember you read it here first.

Parp, parp!

The latest list of stupid names for storms – ie: a little light breeze – has just been announced by the Met Office. It includes Bert, Tilly and Mavis.

Get ready for Storms Vera, Chuck and Dave. One which caught my eye was Vivienne. That’s my sister’s name. I love her dearly but I’ve been on the end of Storm Vivienne over the years. Trust me, if Storm Viv ever blows into town, batten down the hatches!