Tuesday, October 16, 2007

Sanity going up in smoke

The organisation Action on Smoking and Health (ASH) has asked the BBC to apologise after Top Gear presenters Jeremy Clarkson and James May lit pipes filled with herbal tobacco on Sunday's show. The three presenters basically took the piss out of pipe smoking for 5 minutes. Richard Hammond didn't even light his pipe since he has given up smoking. Clarkson burned his tongue when he put the pipe into his mouth the wrong way around.

It was quite funny but I don't think there was a flood of children running to the shops to buy Porsche branded pipes on Monday. I may have missed the coverage of the crush and mass panic on Sky News but I'm pretty sure I'd have seen it on my bloglines. I don't smoke, I actually hate being around people smoking but I found the whole piece very funny but some people didn't.

"Smoking in a studio is illegal. We would hope programme-makers make some form of apology," said a spokeswoman for Action on Smoking and Health (Ash).

Hmm, yeah given Top Gears previous record I suspect they will get an apology all right. Then Clarkson is likely to stick the letter in his pipe and smoke it. Some times political correctness can damage a cause more than help it.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

It was a very funny segment - some people (i.e. ASH) just have no sense of humour!