No Smoke Without Fire

Britain has been plunged into a state of high alert following a new wave of terror attacks aimed at undermining the newly imposed ban on smoking in enclosed public places. “There is no doubt that these outrages are the work of militant smokers,” declared Superintendent Eric Damber-Bush of Scotland Yard’s anti-terror squad, speaking in the aftermath of the attack on a crowded airport terminal, which left hundreds of non-smoking victims gasping for breath and coughing violently. “All of the attacks have targeted exactly the kind of public places in which smokers could previously have enjoyed a cigarette without fear of prosecution: an airport lobby, nightclubs and pubs.” This latest nicotine stained reign of terror commenced with an attempted car bombing of London’s ‘Love Canal’ nightclub in the early hours of last Friday morning. “Patrons staggering out of the club noticed a Mercedes parked outside, with smoke billowing out of it,” explains Damber-Bush. “When Army bomb disposal experts investigated, they found the vehicle’s ashtrays full of blazing French cigarettes. It was clearly the bombers’ intent to ram the car into the club’s entrance, in the hope of filling the enclosed space with acrid smoke. Thankfully, they appear to have mistimed the ignition of their cigarettes, and were forced to abandon the vehicle under threat of being overcome by fumes themselves.” The whole area was immediately evacuated and huge industrial fans set up to disperse the choking fumes. However, within hours the capital was once more in the grip of terror, with drinkers forced to flee from a crowded West End pub when a lit cigarette was deliberately left burning in the lounge bar. “It was horrible! At the first whiff of a cigarette, people began to panic in case they got the smell on their clothes,” says Josie Whiplock, a survivor of the attack, who was herself forced to destroy over five hundred pounds worth of designer clothes contaminated by tobacco fumes in the incident. “I couldn’t breathe and thought I was going to suffocate. Some people who did inhale smoke were rolling on the floor, clawing at their throats and going blue. I saw people crushed in the stampede for the doors!” Indeed, according to the Emergency Services it was a miracle that no one was killed. “Of course, the true damage from passive smoking won’t be seen for years,” commented a paramedic who attended the scene. “Some of those poor bastards now have ticking time bombs for lungs!”

The worst incident of the weekend of tobacco terror was still to come – that same afternoon a smouldering car was crashed into the passenger terminal at Stansted Airport, in an apparent suicide attack. “As it crashed through the glass doors of the terminal, the bonnet popped open to reveal that the engine compartment had been packed with cigarettes,” recalls eyewitness Sally Twintub, who was awaiting a flight to Prague. “The heat of the engine had ignited them and evil smelling smoke was billowing out into the terminal! In the midst of the chaos, I saw two men – one wreathed in cigarette smoke – jump from the car.” Despite being surrounded by startled holiday makers choking and gagging on the fumes, Twintub had the presence of mind to approach the vehicle and record the apprehension of its occupants on her mobile phone. “There was a tense moment when I thought some bloke collapsing with a heart attack had blocked my shot, but when I played it back, I was relieved to find that I’d got the whole thing,” says Twintub, who subsequently sold the footage to Sky News for two hundred pounds. The smouldering suspect was subsequently rushed to hospital, having suffered severe burns and a nasty cough, where he remains under armed guard. “He’d turned himself into a human roll-up,” explains PC Alan Teapott, one of the police officers who grappled the man to the ground. “He’d covered himself in tobacco, before wrapping himself in a huge sheet of tissue paper and lighting himself up.” Teapott was also able to confirm that the suspect was wearing a ‘suicide belt’. “He had several packets of Gitanes stuck to his belt,” he reveals. “It seems that, as a last resort, he was prepared to smoke himself to death, possibly taking several police officers with him by forcing them to inhale his secondhand smoke.” But perhaps the greatest shock came when it was revealed that all those arrested in connection with the attacks were doctors. “The fact that they were from the medical profession – supposedly dedicated to saving lives – wasn’t so surprising. After all, doctors have been particularly badly hit by the smoking ban, which prevents them from lighting up in operating theatres any more,” muses Superintendent Damber-Bush. “No, it was the fact that they are all middle class professionals – anti-smoking ban militancy is traditionally associated with the lower classes, particularly semi-skilled manual workers from the North of England.”

Several working men’s clubs in Bolton, Doncaster and Sheffield have already been shut down following police raids, amid claims that they were breeding grounds for anti-smoking ban sentiments. “Their smoky atmosphere and culture of flat caps, braces and nicotine dependency are conducive to the indoctrination of impressionable young people,” explains Damber-Bush. “Several of their spiritual leaders – so-called stand up comics and club comperes – were arrested after tell-tale nicotine traces were found on their hands.” Rejecting allegations that working class people were suffering victimisation as the result of class snobbery and social stereotyping, Damber-Bush has highlighted the fact that those convicted in recent smoking terror trials had all been members of working men’s clubs. “Only last month a comedian from a club in Rochdale was convicted of plotting to assassinate the Queen with a deadly high tar cigarette,” he points out. “There was no question of his guilt – he’d brought two hundred Gauloises in from France duty free, and was found in possession of a fifteen-foot long cigarette holder, which he’d planned to use to get the filthy fag close to Her Majesty!” The Superintendent also cites the failed plot to build and ignite a so-called ‘dirty roll-up’ over London. “The seven men convicted were all members of these clubs,” he says. “Once again, there could be no doubt as to their guilt – they had a lock-up garage stacked with rolling tobacco and Rizla cigarette papers. Moreover, there was video footage of them at a ‘training camp’ near Epsom, practicing rolling fifty foot long fags!” The top policeman believes Britain’s capital had a lucky escape when this plan was foiled. When a similar weapon – a roll-up eighty feet long and six feet wide – was deployed against Cardiff last year, one puff from the fanatic who had volunteered to smoke it covered the entire city centre with ash and clouds of choking smoke which instantly re-addicted thousands of born-again non-smokers to tobacco. The suicide smoker himself reportedly went green and shrivelled up after attempting a second drag. “The effect was devastating – it will cost hundreds of millions of pounds to clean the nicotine stains off of buildings,” he reveals. “Not to mention the cost of all those nicotine patches they’re having to hand out the new addicts created by the damn thing. I just thank God it happened in Wales, so nobody heard about it – just imagine the propaganda victory for the smokers if the same thing had happened in London!”