The temptation has been strong, from advertisements for tobacco in baseball cards decades ago, to the glorified moment of New York Yankees slugger Babe Ruth accepting a plug of chew from his girlfriend before a climactic game-winning hit in the 1927 movie, Babe Comes Home. What movies rarely document is the dark side: Tony Gwynn, one of the greats on and off the field, dying at 54 after a long fight with mouth cancer
It was the age when crazy millionaires in curly top-hats and lavender waistcoats gave champagne parties in rococo house-boats on the Thames, the age of diabolo and hobble skirts, the age of the "knut" in his grey bowler and cut-away coat, the age of The Merry Widow , Saki's novels, Peter Pan and Where the Rainbow Ends , the age when people talked about chocs and cigs and tipping and topping and heavenly, when they went for divvy week-ends at Brighton and had scrumptious teas at the Troc
Last year, the presenter said that after smoking 'half a million' cigarettes over his life, he 'didn't miss them'
Such things are taught by people who need to denigrate others to feel better about themselves
